I just ran into this problem trying to build mysql [will reference as 'A'].
I've tried building mysql-client from pkgsrc and downloading 4.0.15a source
from the mysql site.

Both instances I get the same error:

checking for char... yes
checking size of char... configure: error: cannot compute sizeof (char), 77

On another netbsd/macppc machine (also running 1.6.1) [will reference as
'B'], I have no problem making mysql-client from pkgsrc.

The packages I have installed on 'A' that are not installed on 'B' are:

cpuflags-0.57       Determine compiler flags to best target current cpu
gawk-3.1.3          GNU awk
libtool-base-1.4.20010614nb16 Generic shared library support script (the
readline-4.3pl5     GNU library that can recall and edit previous input
sudo-1.6.7.5        Allow others to run commands as root
curl-7.10.6         Client that groks URLs
perl-5.8.1          Practical Extraction and Report Language
openssl-0.9.6k      Secure Socket Layer and cryptographic library
python23-2.3nb2     Interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming
mailman-2.0.12      The GNU Mailing List Manager
mawk-1.3.3          Mike Brennan's fast awk clone
mhash-0.8.17        Hash algorithms library
nawk-20030731       Brian Kernighan's pattern-directed scanning and
autoconf-2.57       Generates automatic source code configuration scripts
automake-1.7.6      GNU Standards-compliant Makefile generator
db4-4.1.25          Sleepycat Software's Berkeley DB version 4
libmm-1.2.2         Portable abstraction layer for shared memory
expat-1.95.6nb1     XML parser library written in C
gmp-4.1.2           Library for arbitrary precision arithmetic
apache-1.3.28nb1    Apache HTTP (Web) server
php-4.3.3           HTML-embedded scripting language
ap-php-4.3.3        Apache (apache13) module for PHP4
p5-BSD-Resource-1.15 Perl interface to BSD process resources library
ap-perl-1.25nb1     Module that embeds a Perl interpreter into Apache

I'm not quite sure where the problem may have arisen.  So far I'm able to
make other packages without a problem on 'A'.

In temporarily solving the problem, I made the PATH values the same on each
machine (which just reinforces that there is a problem someplace on 'A').

PATH on 'A': 
PATH=/usr/pkg/gcc3/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/pkg/sbin:/usr/pkg/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/
bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin <-- problem path
PATH on 'B': 
PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/pkg/sbin:/usr/pkg/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin
:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin <-- working path

Having /usr/pkg/gcc3/bin in the path doesn't really matter.

On a side matter, I can't get gcc3-c++ 3.3.1 to build from pkgsrc either.
It just keeps looping forever on the xgcc path.  I get this on two macppc
machines.  So my core compiler and C compiler are gcc3.3.1 and the C++
compiler is 2.95.3.

I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

Any ideas on either issues?

Thanks.

-Ryan

-- 

Ryan La Riviere
http://staff.tdec.drexel.edu/~edljedi