Greg Jandl to SDL I did some digging, and I think I've found a better solution. By including some additional .m4 macros in the acinclude directory (http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf-archive/ax_check_compiler_flags.html, http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf-archive/ax_gcc_archflag.html and http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf-archive/ax_gcc_x86_cpuid.html) then using the patch below (same as previous patch + one line change to configure.in), SDL will build correctly out of the box. The arch can then be overridden by --with-gcc-arch=<arch> (most will probably want to build with i686 there for general distribution) or --without-gcc-arch, to disable setting the arch all together. On my Atom netbook, I get -march=PentiumPro by default, which works great, as does --with-gcc-arch=i686.

#!/bin/sh
#
# libtool assumes that the compiler can handle the -fPIC flag
# This isn't always true (for example, nasm can't handle it)
command=""
while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
    case "$1" in
        -?PIC)
            # Ignore -fPIC and -DPIC options
            ;;
        -fno-common)
            # Ignore -fPIC and -DPIC options
            ;;
        *)
            command="$command $1"
            ;;
    esac
    shift
done
echo $command
exec $command