Can you post the compiler and linker command lines (or juts a chunk of the output before it fails)?

I wonder if it's a problem with the pkg-config file name for gdbm having changed so now it can't be found?

Instead of battling with issues with that package, I just started from scratch with my own virtual machine. Download scratchbox, SDK, ESBox, and the other packages that I was prompted for when running ./configure in the maemo mapper directory. It's able to build, with a few warnings.