Where to turn for help?

Some kind of qualified sysadmin :) iodbc mailing list...

I think, your problem might actually be very simple, see Re^2: Fuse and fuse_loop and the links it lists.

More generic-er advice that applies to DIY build enviroment

MinGW/MSYS development environment - Setting up the base system

sh configure --enable-static --enable-shared --with-libxml-include-prefix=C:/msys/1.0/local/include/libxml2

$config{LIBS}='-l...libxml2.a -l...libiconv.a';
$config{INC}='-I...include/libxml2';
$config{DEFINE} =' -DLIBXML_STATIC ';
WriteMakefile(
              %INFOS,
              %config,
);
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The GNU configure and build system