perl5's use of $(CCCMD)

Why does the perl Makefile use $(CCCMD) both for linking and for compiling?
Is there any reason not to split out a linker command, for the rules that
generate miniperl and perl from object files?

My specific problem is that now parrot uses ICU, it needs to be linked against
the C++ libraries, which is most easily and portably done by making the link
command be the C++ compiler. However parrot's embedding code isn't valid C++
(massive bug to fix), so it would be most easy if I could carry on using
the C compiler to compile C files to object files.

The current perl
Configure and Makefile don't let this differentiation be made. Configure does
ask about a "linker", but that's used for the targets that make dynamic
libraries. How hard would it be to add support for distinct linkers?

Nicholas Clark