Running configure like this:
$ bash configure --with-boot-jdk=$HOME/netbeans/jdks/jdk17 --with-num-cores=1 --with-jobs=1 --with-memory-size=1024

Fails with:
-----
checking cups/ppd.h presence... yes
checking for cups/ppd.h... yes
checking for FREETYPE... yes
checking for freetype... yes (using pkg-config)
checking if we can compile and link with freetype... no
configure: Could not compile and link with freetype. This might be a 32/64-bit mismatch.
configure: Using FREETYPE_CFLAGS=-I/usr/include/freetype2 and FREETYPE_LIBS=-lfreetype
configure: error: Can not continue without freetype. You might be able to fix this by running 'sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev'.
configure exiting with result code 1
-----

This appears to be caused by listing linker flags before the source file on the gcc command line in 'common/autoconf/generated-configure.sh'. Taking this example (from configure script):
-----test.cpp:
/* confdefs.h */
#define PACKAGE_NAME "OpenJDK"
#define PACKAGE_TARNAME "openjdk"
#define PACKAGE_VERSION "jdk8"
#define PACKAGE_STRING "OpenJDK jdk8"
#define PACKAGE_BUGREPORT "build-dev@openjdk.java.net"
#define PACKAGE_URL "http://openjdk.java.net"
#define STDC_HEADERS 1
#define HAVE_SYS_TYPES_H 1
#define HAVE_SYS_STAT_H 1
#define HAVE_STDLIB_H 1
#define HAVE_STRING_H 1
#define HAVE_MEMORY_H 1
#define HAVE_STRINGS_H 1
#define HAVE_INTTYPES_H 1
#define HAVE_STDINT_H 1
#define HAVE_UNISTD_H 1
#define HAVE_STDIO_H 1
#define SIZEOF_INT_P 8
#define HAVE_X11_EXTENSIONS_SHAPE_H 1
#define HAVE_X11_EXTENSIONS_XRENDER_H 1
#define HAVE_X11_EXTENSIONS_XTEST_H 1
#define HAVE_X11_INTRINSIC_H 1
#define HAVE_CUPS_CUPS_H 1
#define HAVE_CUPS_PPD_H 1
/* end confdefs.h. */

       #include<ft2build.h>
       #include FT_FREETYPE_H
       int main () {
         FT_Init_FreeType(NULL);
         return 0;
       }
-----

Building like this does not work:
$ /usr/bin/g++-4.6 -o conftest -I/usr/include/freetype2 -lfreetype test.cpp
/tmp/cchXKTqQ.o: In function `main':
test.cpp:(.text+0xa): undefined reference to `FT_Init_FreeType'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

Building like this does work:
$ /usr/bin/g++-4.6 -o conftest -I/usr/include/freetype2 test.cpp -lfreetype

Not sure why the order matters, though.

The problem happens with a recent checkout of jdk8/tl:
$ for d in . *; do if [ -d $d/.hg ] ; then echo $d; hg id $d; fi; done
.
a36df87b3901+ tip
corba
219e616a6a4f tip
hotspot
0e55a181cb08 tip
jaxp
96562bf197f2 tip
jaxws
9ad289610fc6 tip
jdk
d34c5e860d5f tip
langtools
44e3ba40e00c tip
nashorn
767e85d2a1b3 tip

I'll attach a workaround patch that seems to work for me (so far).