Apply the two patches, one to fix compilation and the other to stop the fixincludes script from executing. patch -Np1 -i ../gcc-&gcc2-version;-1.patch && patch -Np1 -i ../gcc-&gcc2-version;-no-fixinc.patch The gcc development team recommends building in a seperate directory. mkdir ../gcc-build && cd ../gcc-build Configure gcc to build the c and c++ compilers and enable the related c++ options. ../gcc-&gcc2-version;/configure \ --prefix=/opt/gcc2 \ --enable-shared --enable-languages=c,c++ \ --enable-threads=posix Compile and install gcc and remove unneeded directories (adjust the machine triplet to match your architecture). make bootstrap && make install && ln -sf gcc /opt/gcc2/bin/cc && rm -rf /opt/gcc2/{i686-pc-linux-gnu,info,man} Make note of the library that is installed. L=`find /opt/gcc2/lib -name "*libstdc++*.so" -type f` && IL=`basename $L` Move the c++ libraries to the standard lib directory to avoid having to add /opt/gcc2/lib to /etc/ld.so.conf. for i in /opt/gcc2/lib/*.so*; do mv -f $i /usr/lib; ln -sf /usr/lib/`basename $i` /opt/gcc2/lib; done Create symlinks required by commercial and precompiled packages. ln -sf $IL /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 && ln -sf $IL /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 && ln -sf $IL /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.3-2.so.3