this flag has caused this behaviour on my system (from config.log):
configure:9177: checking for initscr in -lncurses
configure:9204: arm-oe-linux-gnueabi-gcc -march=armv4 -mtune=strongarm
-mthumb-interwork -mno-thumb -o conftest -Os
-isystem/home/builds/fresh/jornada7xx/tmp/sysroots/armv4-oe-linux-gnueabi/usr/include
-D_GNU_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64
-L/home/builds/fresh/jornada7xx/tmp/sysroots/armv4-oe-linux-gnueabi/usr/lib
-Wl,-rpath-link,/home/builds/fresh/jornada7xx/tmp/sysroots/armv4-oe-linux-gnueabi/usr/lib
-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--hash-style=gnu conftest.c -lncurses -lm -L/lib >&5
/lib/libgcc_s.so.1: file not recognized: File format not recognized
of course because my /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 is for i386 and I was building for an arm.
inherit autotools
do_configure() {
+ sed -i "s:-L/lib::" "${S}/configure"
oe_runconf
}