Compile & build qt4 on ubuntu 12.04

Question

I am trying to compile and build Qt 4.8.3 from source. When I do ./configure, I get the following error message :

./configure: 183: ./configure: /^(QMAKE_CXX)=/ { print substr($0, index($0, "=") + 1) }: not found
ERROR: Cannot set the compiler for the configuration tests

Is this happening because I need to explicitly set the QMAKE_CXX variable? Thanks