diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index b82f0604cf..7fa3ed74e9 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,5 +1,8 @@
 2002-12-03  Nathanael Nerode  <neroden@gcc.gnu.org>
 
+	* configure.in (host_tools): Order binutils, gas and ld for
+	convenience in running the testsuites.
+
 	* Makefile.tpl: Introduce rules to serialize subconfigure runs.
 	* Makefile.in: Regenerate.
 	* configure.in: Introduce rules to serialize subconfigure runs.
diff --git a/configure.in b/configure.in
index 1a1cd4c7c2..f1382eefaa 100644
--- a/configure.in
+++ b/configure.in
@@ -80,7 +80,9 @@ libstdcxx_version="target-libstdc++-v3"
 # these tools are built for the host environment
 # Note, the powerpc-eabi build depends on sim occurring before gdb in order to
 # know that we are building the simulator.
-host_tools="texinfo byacc flex bison binutils ld gas gcc sid sim gdb make patch prms send-pr gprof etc expect dejagnu ash bash bzip2 m4 autoconf automake libtool grep diff rcs fileutils shellutils time textutils wdiff find uudecode hello tar gzip indent recode release sed utils guile perl gawk findutils snavigator gettext zip fastjar"
+# binutils, gas and ld appear in that order because it makes sense to run
+# "make check" in that particular order.
+host_tools="texinfo byacc flex bison binutils gas ld gcc sid sim gdb make patch prms send-pr gprof etc expect dejagnu ash bash bzip2 m4 autoconf automake libtool grep diff rcs fileutils shellutils time textutils wdiff find uudecode hello tar gzip indent recode release sed utils guile perl gawk findutils snavigator gettext zip fastjar"
 
 # libgcj represents the runtime libraries only used by gcj.
 libgcj="target-libffi \