cross compilation does not work

[jeffhammond]

I am creating this issue for tracking and posterity. I expect to solve it soon enough. If I've missed something obvious that solves this, please let me know.

jhammond@thetalogin1:~/AQUARIUS/aquarius$ ./configure MPIF77=ftn MPICC=cc MPICXX=CC --with-blas="-mkl" --with-lapack=="-mkl"
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /usr/bin/mkdir -p
checking for gawk... gawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking whether make supports nested variables... yes
checking whether make supports nested variables... (cached) yes
checking whether to enable maintainer-specific portions of Makefiles... no
checking whether to compile using MPI... yes
checking whether the Fortran 77 compiler works... yes
checking for Fortran 77 compiler default output file name... a.out
checking for suffix of executables... 
checking whether we are cross compiling... configure: error: in `/home/jhammond/AQUARIUS/aquarius':
configure: error: cannot run Fortran 77 compiled programs.
If you meant to cross compile, use `--host'.
See `config.log' for more details

The cause is obvious but to be explicit:

configure:3257: checking whether the Fortran 77 compiler works
configure:3279: ftn   conftest.f  >&5
configure:3283: $? = 0
configure:3331: result: yes
configure:3334: checking for Fortran 77 compiler default output file name
configure:3336: result: a.out
configure:3342: checking for suffix of executables
configure:3349: ftn -o conftest   conftest.f  >&5
configure:3353: $? = 0
configure:3375: result:
configure:3391: checking whether we are cross compiling
configure:3399: ftn -o conftest   conftest.f  >&5
configure:3403: $? = 0
configure:3410: ./conftest

Please verify that both the operating system and the processor support Intel(R) AVX512F, ADX, RDSEED, AVX512ER, AVX512PF and AVX512CD instructions.

configure:3414: $? = 1
configure:3421: error: in `/home/jhammond/AQUARIUS/aquarius':
configure:3423: error: cannot run Fortran 77 compiled programs.
If you meant to cross compile, use `--host'.
See `config.log' for more details