When compiling GDAL with python support, before Lib/distutils/unixccompiler.py:180,

self.compiler_cxx = ['/bin/sh', '/usr/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/bin/libtool', '--mode=compile', '--tag=CXX', 'x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-c++']
linker = ['x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-cc', '-pthread', '-shared', '-march=native', '-pipe', '-O2', '-Wall', '-Wdeclaration-after-statement', '-Wextra', '-Winit-self', '-Wunused-parameter', '-Wmissing-prototypes', '-Wmissing-declarations', '-Wformat', '-Werror=format-security', '-Wno-format-nonliteral', '-Wlogical-op', '-Wshadow', '-Werror=vla', '-Wdeclaration-after-statement', '-Wnull-dereference', '-Wduplicated-cond', '-DOGR_ENABLED', '-march=native', '-pipe', '-O2', '-I/var/tmp/paludis/build/sci-libs-gdal-2.1.1/work/gdal-2.1.1/port', '-DGDAL_COMPILATION']

and after the workaround code:

linker = ['/bin/sh', '-pthread', '-shared', '-march=native', '-pipe', '-O2', '-Wall', '-Wdeclaration-after-statement', '-Wextra', '-Winit-self', '-Wunused-parameter', '-Wmissing-prototypes', '-Wmissing-declarations', '-Wformat', '-Werror=format-security', '-Wno-format-nonliteral', '-Wlogical-op', '-Wshadow', '-Werror=vla', '-Wdeclaration-after-statement', '-Wnull-dereference', '-Wduplicated-cond', '-DOGR_ENABLED', '-march=native', '-pipe', '-O2', '-I/var/tmp/paludis/build/sci-libs-gdal-2.1.1/work/gdal-2.1.1/port', '-DGDAL_COMPILATION']

which leads to next error:

/bin/sh: -d: invalid option

Some fixes to compilation (https://www.michael-joost.de/gdal_install.html) have been found, but anyway the existing workaround:

1. ...is a hack about OSX but there is no platform checking,

2. ...assumes linker and compiler commands have similar structure and
environment settings (no documentation reference found about that), and

3. ...assumes `env`, if used, does not come with any modifier.

My proposal is to remove the workaround and delegate right environmental variables to packagers.