If you rebuild the entire Developer's Kit from source, the top-level configuration files handle the following configuration detail for you automatically.
But if you rebuild the compiler alone for a MIPS target, we
highly recommend that you specify `--with-gnu-as' on the command
line for configure. This avoides an incompatibility between the
GNU assembler and the MIPS assembler. The MIPS assembler
does not support debugging directives, and GCC uses a special program,
mips-tfile, to generate them. GNU AS parses the debugging
directives directly, and does not require mips-tfile.
You should also specify `--with-stabs' on the command line to
configure. This provides better debugging symbols, in particular
for C++.
If you plan to use GNU LD, be sure to specify `--with-gnu-ld' when you rebuild on any platform for which the linker is available.