can't build translated makefile on snow leopard 10.6.5 w/ g++ 4.2.1 (complaint: g++: No such file or directory, although g++ is there!!)

[nyiotis]

greetings!

I am trying to build research code written in (templated) c++, size
is
approximately ~15K lines.
the code was never been tested on a mac, not to mention snow leopard.
I have the guarantee that it compiles + builds for win + linux.
Project was a collaborative effort and unfortunately
I am stuck without a makefile =P and with the ugly *.vcproj file.

Note that I did not use an automated  ruby script I found for
the translation of *.vcproj to makefile, since the script only
handled
the basics -> no pre/post-build steps or file-specific flags are
included;
instead, I translated from scratch to CMakelists and then converted to
makefile.
not that tricky as it sounds..
So, assuming the problem is w/ the makefile, why do I have a clean
makefile during the configuration/generation steps?
Note that I choose to generate Unix makefile, not an xcode project.

So I 've successfully translated the *.vcproj file into a makefile,
fixed
a few issues, linked to external libs, but the build w/ make fails and
I get

i686-apple-darwin10-g++-4.2.1: g++: No such file or directory
make[2]: *** [CMakeFiles/.../.../...cpp.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/.../.../all] Error 2
make: *** [all] Error 2

which, honestly, I don't remember seeing before -> complaining about g
++
I mean and not missing file or dir. Note that g++ *is* in place, I can
successfully compile other programs.
I am stuck a few hours now and I suspect  (or better hope) that the
problem is sth similar to the typical 32-bit/64-bit problem in mac
ports.
I tried w/ -arch i386 -m32  flags without any luck, so I 'd love to
hear any thoughts, ideas..

I guess there are parts of the code need to be re-written especially
for OS X SL,
but I cannot figure out the problem since the failing error is not
descriptive enough

When I build a xcodeproj (with g++ flag -arch i386), I get:

lipo: can't figure out the architecture type of: /var/folders/9b/
9b2CWG5gHvCi5hawjO4o5E+++TI/-Tmp-//ccXHDX6t.out
Command /Developer/usr/bin/gcc-4.2 failed with exit code 1

When I build a xcodeproj (with g++ flag -arch x86_64), I get:

setenv LANG en_US.US-ASCII
/Developer/usr/bin/gcc-4.2 -x c++ -arch x86_64 -fmessage-length=0 -
pipe -Wno-trigraphs -fpascal-strings -fasm-blocks -O0 -mdynamic-no-
pic
-DCMAKE_INTDIR="Debug" -isysroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.6.sdk -
mmacosx-version-min=10.6 -gdwarf-2 -Wmost -Wno-four-char-constants -
Wno-unknown-pragmas //... ...
i686-apple-darwin10-gcc-4.2.1: g++: No such file or directory
Command /Developer/usr/bin/gcc-4.2 failed with exit code 1

all cryptic to me..

Finally, although developing on a mac, I do not use Cocoa(/xcode)
that uses otool to find any required shared libraries. So from the
command line
I don't have to care about otool and instead use the ldd

thanks for any help!

ps. note that I am building from command line without xcode
and the -pedantic flag I use is not the reason of the failure