Using newer version of GCC and binutils

Erratus

Erratus

Having read http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/custom-gcc/article.html some questions arise:

  1. The article headline "Using newer version of GCC and binutils with the FreeBSD Ports Collection" talks about ports collection. Why or why not building a custom kernel with a newer gcc version?

  2. After having build gcc44 from ports and followed the article till end

    gcc -v shows gcc version 4.2.1 20070719 Target: amd64-undermydesk-freebsd.
    gcc44 -v shows 4.4.3 20091215 (prerelease) (GCC) Target: x86_64-portbld-freebsd8.0 .

    Now does this suggest that gcc44 is not used when gcc is invoked or does this work on ports only?

  3. The article stays short on how to configure gcc[newer] for general usage. I could not find clear instructions on how to configure environment variables and/or system links for newer gcc versions. What is best practise or should this be avoided?

  4. There are different readings of Target: . Is further configuration for target on amd64 necessary?
Can someone please help?
 
That is a fine thread you opened and a very hot topic to discuss, provided that there are people from here who choose ports compilation over binary precompiled packages as a means to have increased performance.
Now, if we accept what people have reported about the speed gains by using gcc4.4 instead of 4.2.1 (which FreeBSD is tied to), then how would it seem for your newly compiled e.g. postgersql or KDE to be *slower* than the one of your next door Kubuntu linux newbie?

PS
Just to be specific in your post. Did you try setting env variables CC or CXX?
 
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