cannot get build (initdb) to work after trying for a week

I am getting truly desperate! I am trying to build any version of
Postgres on Windows from source. First experience with Postgres
source. I have struggled for days trying to solve a problem. Would be
willing to pay for the solution!!!

The following error occurred when issuing a vanilla initdb command on
my Windows system.

FATAL: could not select a suitable default timezone
DETAIL: It appears that your GMT time zone uses leap seconds.
PostgreSQL does not support leap seconds.

I built this from 8.1.8 source under msys/mingw. Also tried 8.2.2.
Everything builds fine but initdb always reports the above error and
quits.

I was able to run successfully from 8.1.5 binaries on the same
system. This would lead me to believe that it is a simple compiler
switch somewhere that would alleviate this problem.

I have tried variations of configure, including and not including
mingw includes and libs.

I also had to create a typedef int ssize_t in a couple of files to get
the compile finished. Maybe this is related. Other than that, have
not touched any code.

Given that an 8.1.5 binary dist worked for me, what flags were
provided to build that version? Simply configure, then make?