You receive this bug because this package does not respect my system's AR ( x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-ar - /usr/bin/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-ar ) and calls directly ar - /usr/bin/ar The possible solutions to fix this issue are: 1)Fix the buildsystem, if you can 2)inherit toolchain-funcs and use tc-export AR 3)inherit toolchain-funcs and use emake AR="$(tc-getAR)" ar cru libsphinx.a sphinx.o sphinxexcerpt.o sphinxquery.o sphinxsoundex.o sphinxmetaphone.o sphinxstemen.o sphinxstemru.o sphinxstemcz.o sphinxutils.o md5.o sphinxstd.o sphinxsort.o sphinxexpr.o sphinxfilter.o sphinxsearch.o sphinxrt.o
Fixed in sphinx 2.0.8.