macOS link problems on mac

I'm trying to compile a c++ project on my new mac uing the MacOSX GCC compiler, but I get the following error message:

usr/bin/ld: warning -L: directory name (lib) does not exist
/usr/bin/ld: can't locate file for: -lcrt0.o
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

From what I can gather by google'ing the error, it's caused by the GCC compiler. Does anyone have a solution? I don't normally program C/C++ (but Java) so I'm not really interested in installing xcode.

I'm running MAC OS X 10.4.10.

when I type gcc -v I get the following output:

Using built-in specs.
Target: i686-apple-darwin8
Configured with: /private/var/tmp/gcc/gcc-5367.obj~1/src/configure --disable-checking -enable-werror --prefix=/usr --mandir=/share/man --enable-languages=c,objc,c++,obj-c++ --program-transform-name=/^[cg][^.-]*$/s/$/-4.0/ --with-gxx-include-dir=/include/c++/4.0.0 --with-slibdir=/usr/lib --build=powerpc-apple-darwin8 --with-arch=nocona --with-tune=generic --program-prefix= --host=i686-apple-darwin8 --target=i686-apple-darwin8
Thread model: posix
gcc version 4.0.1 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 5367)

I understand that xcode is a preference to many, but I'm a Java-developer with no plans to go back to developing in C/C++. I simply need to compile this one project and then I'll be happy