One of the main gcc issues that this compiler is actually maintained by employees of some large Linux vendors like RedHat. These vendors don't have interest to keep the newer versions running on ancient processors like 680000 or Vax. Nobody is interested in buying a RedHat support contract for a VAX, so why should RedHat sponsor their employees to work on gcc for these fossils?
That is why you see that OpenBSD and NetBSD releases for these hardware platforms are obligated to use a different older version of gcc, than for the more popular architectures like amd64 and i386. The newer gcc versions have dropped support for older architectures.
See for example
http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.7/changes.html:
Quote:
The following ports for individual systems on particular architectures have been obsoleted:
IRIX 6.5 (mips-sgi-irix6.5)
MIPS OpenBSD (mips*-*-openbsd*)
Solaris 8 (*-*-solaris2.8). Details can be found in the announcement.
Tru64 UNIX V5.1 (alpha*-dec-osf5.1*)
|