My '-R' options in LDFLAGS are being ignored at certain link times. [...] Solaris 9 SPARC gcc + /usr/ccs/bin/ld
With that linker you can work around it by setting the environment first. This from an in-house Makefile:
export LD_OPTIONS := \ -R/software/${DB_VERSION}/lib \ -R/software/${KRB_VERSION}/lib \ -R/software/${LDAP_VERSION}/lib \ -R/software/${SSL_VERSION}/lib gdm