diff --git a/Lib/distutils/unixccompiler.py b/Lib/distutils/unixccompiler.py
index f159586..004e89f 100644
--- a/Lib/distutils/unixccompiler.py
+++ b/Lib/distutils/unixccompiler.py
@@ -200,6 +200,11 @@ class UnixCCompiler(CCompiler):
 
                 if sys.platform == 'darwin':
                     linker = _osx_support.compiler_fixup(linker, ld_args)
+
+                if target_lang == "c++" and self.compiler_cxx:
+                    ld_args += linker[i+offset+1:]
+                else:
+                    ld_args += linker[1:]
 
                 self.spawn(linker + ld_args)
             except DistutilsExecError as msg:
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 3a7a2e7..88e116a 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -2289,7 +2289,7 @@ class PyBuildExt(build_ext):
             # poor man's shlex, the re module is not available yet.
             value = config_vars.get(name)
             if not value:
-                return ()
+                return []
             # This trick works because ax_check_openssl uses --libs-only-L,
             # --libs-only-l, and --cflags-only-I.
             value = ' ' + value