Wrong conclusion about gcc/make being 'apparently unavailable yet in
chroot environment'.

Further investigation found that, during a ./configure test (before
'make'), 'gcc' failed to create executables (for a small
'conftest.c'), with a message of "collect2: cannot find 'ld' ".
However, 'binutils' was among the packages that had been installed
prior to the %post section, and the directory /usr/bin (where ld
lives) is found in PATH by ./configure.

Also, in the system booted from the dvd image, the ./configure script
runs successfully, and ld is where it should be.

Google search so far hasn't turn up anything relevant. Suggestions and
help are appreciated.  Thanks