Compiling MariaDB : cannot find ncurses: File format not recognized

This week I have been trying to upgrade my MariaDB instance to latest and have been having some problems with getting it to compile right. My first issue was that it couldn't find the ncurses libraries, so I had to grab and compile the source for that (I'm trying to run everything in userspace). Once I did that, I specified the "--with-named-curses-libs=[DIR]" switch and began my re-configure. Once I did that, I received the following error: /usr/bin/ld: cannot find /home/mariadb/ncurses/: File format not recognized collect2: ld returned 1 exit status make[2]: *** [mysql] Error 1 make[2]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs.... make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/mariadb/mariadb-5.3.3-rc-src/client' make[1]: *** [all] Error 2 make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/mariadb/mariadb-5.3.3-rc-src/client' make: *** [all-recursive] Error 1 I searched around for some time and could not find the answer until I happened upon something unrelated that pointed me towards the --with-client-ldflags=-all-static switch. I threw that switch onto the end of my configure string and presto!