I was just attempting to build Python 2.3.4 on Solaris 9, using 
Sun's Compilers and linkers (/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc and /usr/ccs/
bin/ld).
The configure script correctly determined that I was not using 
either GNU gcc or GNU ld. However, it continued to put GNU 
specific variables into the Makefile (specifically, -Wl,<stuff>).  This 
broke several things, until I manually removed them. The first 
place it broke was when it created the shared library, which, 
because of the different ways that Sun's linker and GNU ld handle 
options, ended up being named "name\=libpython2.3.so.1.0" 
because Sun's compiler detected two -o flags (the first being in the 
-Wl,-soname=libpython2.3.so.1.0 -o libpython2.3.so.1.0) - and 
Sun's linker takes the first -o flag it sees (it helpfully tells you that, 
though).
So... the GNU specific flags need to ONLY be used if the GNU ld/
gcc are being used.