It looks like #5235 broke linking on my platform, I now get this error when linking test_bitcoin:

  CXXLD    test/test_bitcoin
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/libdb_cxx-4.8.a(cxx_db.o): relocation R_X86_64_32 against `_db_associate_intercept_c' can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC
/usr/lib/libdb_cxx-4.8.a: error adding symbols: Bad value
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
make[2]: *** [test/test_bitcoin] Error 1

I installed libdb4.8 from the ppa described in the build-unix.md instructions. If I back my git repo to just before 5235 was committed, my build works fine.

It looks to me like removing -static-libtool-libs from the test_test_bitcoin_LDFLAGS (in Makefile.test.include) might solve my problem but I don't really understand what that is for.