I recommend that you do an "out of source" build. This means
that Axiom is built in a different directory then where the
source distribution exists.
To do this, first use svn to check-out a clean copy of the
Axiom source to some directory, e.g. ~/axiom.improvements.
After that you will not change anything in that directory.
Instead, create a 2nd directory, e.g.
$ mkdir ~/axiom.build
$ cd ~/axiom.build
$ ../axiom.improvements/configure --with-gcl
This will setup the ~/axiom.build directory with just the
subdirectories and makefiles needed for the build. Then
$ make
builds all of the axiom intermediate files and the final target
in this 2nd directory.
If the build fails and you want to start entirely from scratch
then just delete the contents of this directory and issue the
configure command again:
$ rm -rf *
$ ../axiom.improvements/configure --with-gcl