>
> The reason I wanted to start with gcc 0.9, a few years ago, was that in
> the early days gcc would compile under just about any OS and C compiler
> -- the newer gcc's only seem to compile under gcc. So you start with gcc
> 0.9, get it to build under native plan 9, not APE, then bootstrap your
> way forward to current. I have no idea if this will work, but I did
> bootstrap gcc onto a lot of weird machines 15 years ago. It looks much
> harder, however, to drop gcc 4.0 onto a non-gcc-like C compiler and get
> it to go!



If this ever worked, this should still work right, just possibly with
several bootstrapped stages to get to that point.

I think the real danger in doing this is getting someone who wants to be a
GNU maintainer/defender of the Plan 9 platform.  I've no interest to ever
look under the hood of the GNU compiler collection personally, but I can see
the value in having this available on Plan 9.