"empty" Makefile

[Ethan Tira-Thompson]

And now for my own question...
I'm trying to build a cross compiler from powerpc (host) to mips  
(target).  Here's the script I'm running (PREFIX is set to /usr/local/ 
OPEN_R_SDK_new, TARGET is mipsel-linux):
-----------------------------------------------------------
export PATH="$PREFIX/bin:$PATH"

if [ ! -d "$NEWLIB_BLD" ] ; then
     mkdir $NEWLIB_BLD || exit
     echo Configuring $NEWLIB
     (cd $NEWLIB_BLD; ../$NEWLIB/configure --prefix=$PREFIX \
         --target=$TARGET --disable-multilib --enable-newlib-hw-fp)  
|| exit
fi;

echo Making $NEWLIB
(cd $NEWLIB_BLD; make) || exit

echo Installing $NEWLIB
(cd $NEWLIB_BLD; make install) || exit
-----------------------------------------------------------


With newlib-1.13.0 I get the error during configuration:
-----------------------------------------------------------
*** This configuration is not supported in the following subdirectories:
      target-newlib target-libgloss
     (Any other directories should still work fine.)
-----------------------------------------------------------
...and it will generator a no-op Makefile which has all empty targets.
This seems to be because of line 1508 of configure:
1507:   mips*-*-linux*)
1508:     noconfigdirs="$noconfigdirs target-newlib target-libgloss"
1509:    ;;
If I comment out 1508, then the build can proceed as expected.

My question is, why is the package disabled for all of the mips  
targets?  Does the current newlib release not support mips, or is  
this some kind of oversight?

(a secondary question: enabling hardware floating point makes sense  
for a MIPS R7000, right?  (I'm trying to update the compiler we use  
for the Aibo, which has a 576MHz R7000 processor))

Thanks!
   -ethan


PS I had to make one change in order for the compilation to succeed:
diff -u newlib-1.13.0/configure newlib-1.13.0-patched/configure
--- newlib-1.13.0/configure     2004-12-16 14:51:28.000000000 -0500
+++ newlib-1.13.0-patched/configure     2005-09-11 03:34:59.000000000  
-0400
@@ -1505,7 +1505,7 @@
      noconfigdirs="$noconfigdirs target-newlib ${libgcj}"
      ;;
    mips*-*-linux*)
-    noconfigdirs="$noconfigdirs target-newlib target-libgloss"
+#    noconfigdirs="$noconfigdirs target-newlib target-libgloss"
      ;;
    mips*-*-*)
      noconfigdirs="$noconfigdirs gprof ${libgcj}"

Otherwise I would get:
../../../../../newlib-1.13.0/newlib/libc/ctype/ctype_.c:91: error:  
'_ctype_' aliased to undefined symbol '_ctype_b+127'