I've installed gcc 4.6.1 on lion, do I overwrite default gcc?

Question

I (more or less) followed the instructions here http://solarianprogrammer.com/2011/09/20/compiling-gcc-4-6-1-on-mac-osx-lion/ to install a more recent version of gcc so that I can build ruby on a new machine.

So I now have gcc installed to ~/my_gcc, and the instructions say to access gcc in this location by running

export PATH=$HOME/my_gcc/bin:$PATH

I did this, but am still getting the old gcc when I check the version.

$ gcc -v
gcc version 4.2.1 (Based on Apple Inc. build 5658) (LLVM build 2336.1.00)

If I move the gcc in /usr/bin/gcc to gcc_old, I don't get any gcc recognized even though when I echo $PATH the ~/my_gcc/bin path does show up. Should I just copy ~/my_gcc/bin to /usr/bin?

Answer 1

I hacked around this using a previous method (ran into the EXACT same problem) and unfortunately I could not come up with a non hacky solution.. however:

Using which gcc will tell you where the default installed gcc is. Now if I were you, I would move the old gcc to a new directory and create a symbolic link to the new gcc directory in the old directory.

Try gcc -vagain after that.

Sorry for the illegitimate method. I have yet to come up with a clean solution.

+1 to anyone who does if I see it.

Good luck

Answer 2

If you have followed the procedure described here, you should inquire for my-gcc, my-g++, my-gfortran and so on. The author has purposely added the "my-" prefix in order to not mess up Apple's compilers.

my-gcc -v

should return gcc-4.6.1 or 4.6.2.