It's caused by a compiler bug. I reduced it to a small test case
(see http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/STDCXX-936) and sent it
to Sun. It has been assigned a review ID of 1249871.

The fix is to use the quoted form of the #include directive in
limits.cpp, like so:

Index: src/limits.cpp
===================================================================
--- src/limits.cpp      (revision 656806)
+++ src/limits.cpp      (working copy)
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@
   * implied.   See  the License  for  the  specific language  governing
   * permissions and limitations under the License.
   *
- * Copyright 1994-2006 Rogue Wave Software.
+ * Copyright 1994-2008 Rogue Wave Software, Inc.
   *
 
**************************************************************************/

@@ -31,12 +31,12 @@
  #include <rw/_defs.h>

  // define generic template and specializations
-#include <limits>
+#include "limits"

  #if _MSC_VER != 1300   // working around an MSVC 7.0 bug (PR #26562)
  #  undef _RWSTD_LIMITS_INCLUDED
  #  define _RWSTD_DEFINE_EXPORTS

     // define static data members of specializations
-#  include <limits>
+#  include "limits"
  #endif   // MSVC != 7.0


Giai Truong wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> A customer discovered a problem with std::numeric_limits<> in stdcxx.
> Passing std::numeric_limits<> as an lvalue as in the example below
> results in undefined symbols for the symbol std::numeric_limits<> at
> link time:
>    
> #include <iostream>
> #include <algorithm>
> #include <limits>
> 
> int main()
> { 
>   int i = std::numeric_limits<double>::digits10;
>   int j = std::min(std::numeric_limits<double>::digits10, 10);
> //Undefined Symbols
>   int j1 = std::max(std::numeric_limits<float>::min_exponent10, 2);
> //Undefined Symbols
>   std::cout << i << std::endl;
>   std::cout << j << std::endl;
> }
> 
> 
> Undefined                       first referenced
>  symbol                             in file
> std::numeric_limits<double>::digits10 t.o
> [Hint: static member std::numeric_limits<double>::digits10 must be
> defined in the program]
> 
> ld: fatal: Symbol referencing errors. No output written to t
> *** Error code 1
> make: Fatal error: Command failed for target `t'
> 
> Any insight into the cause of this issue? The problem doesn't seem to
> occur with native STL. The platform is Solaris/Sun Studio.