Compile help, please

I am new to this environment and I am lost.  I am using Ubuntu 7.10 and I
have the source gateway-1.4.1 downloaded.  I am trying to compile kannel and
I get the following errors after I run ./configure:
...   checking for C compiler default output file name... configure: error:
C compiler cannot create executables

Is this an error caused by not having the Gnome-xml library installed?  If
it is, how do I install it?  I've been out to the xmlsoft.org site and have
come across several .rpm's.  Which of these am I after and how do I install
it / where do I put it?

Also, because I am attempting to mod an SMSC driver (I have not changed any
code yet), I first attempted to simply run make and I got the following
error:
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  Stop.


In all of the documentation I have looked at I cannot see that I need to
provide any args to "make" to compile this.  What am I doing wrong?

Thank you very much for any help you can provide.


-Tony