backward compatibility problem with grub

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

Background:

I tripped over a grub bug in Fedora Core 3 on x86_64 (actually,
probably any arch with NX support).  It was suggested that I fetch
and build the rawhide version of grub to see if the problem has been
fixed.  See
	https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=147392

It turns out that the latest version of the grub SRPM will not build
on FC3.  This seems very unfortunate.  I would consider it a bug.  Is
this known?  Intended?  A good thing?

Details:
I fetched  
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/development/SRPMS/grub-0.95-12.src.rpm
Trying to build it on FC3 x86_64 + updates failed with errors:
checking for C compiler default output file name... configure: error: C compiler
cannot create executables

Reading config.log, I see instead a couple of compiler errors.  Both suggest
that a different version of gcc was expected:
configure:2396: gcc -V </dev/null >&5
gcc: `-V' option must have argument

configure:2425: gcc -m32 -Os -g -fno-strict-aliasing -Wall -Wno-pointer-sign
-Werror -Wno-shadow -static   conftest.c  >&5
cc1: error: unrecognized command line option "-Wno-pointer-sign"

I got the same errors in FC3 i386 + updates.