These errors might point to using a later version of GCC than the one intended to compile the source. This is because the later GCC gets, the more ansi compliant it gets and the more it complains about bad coding. Such is life.

Now, I don't have 3.8.1, but if

locate gcc

reveals more than one version of gcc, you might try either setting the environment variable to the earlier one or setting thee symbolic link to point to the earlier version. I can't remember how to do the former, but the latter is a symlink in /usr/bin/ which points (by default) to the later version (in my case 3.3 -- the old one is 2.95 -- but I'm using a HD install of 3.6).