Thanks, yes, that did it.

I think the only part that was missing was setting "OS = auto" (the
search/preprocessor Makefiles have that somewhere close to the top).
Should work now.

That didn't quite work --- the OS detection block at the head was garbled (maybe I 
copied it wrong).  See the attached re-patch, which works for me.

Merged (with some small changes, so let me know if it doesn't work).
Thanks!

I believe that the attached patch (which I copied out of the same approach for 
preprocess) will do the trick.

OK. For reasons that would take a while to explain, it would be good to preserve
static linking as a default on Linux machines, so I'd suggest using conditional
compilation based on the target platform, like with the preprocessor and search
code. Would you be willing to work on a patch?

Yes, that does it, as far as I can tell.

Does removing the
    -static -static-libgcc
options for the VAL Makefile fix things?

Forgot to add Malte...

This is not a really high priority item, but seems worth a mention. I am able to 
build validate from upstream on the Mac, but not the version included with fast-
downward.

As far as I can tell, this is because the fast-downward copy wants a static 
build and Mac OS X doesn't support static linking.