this is hilarious:

The Hen and the Eggs (Egcs?):
-----------------------------

When I tried to bootstrap a 64 bit variant of gcc for hpux-11.0 I tried until I
knew all configure options and build possibilities by heart. I had no success at
all, because the 64 bit version of gcc is "for experts only", which means that
Johnny Normaluser is left alone in the dark. I guess there _is_ indeed a way to
bootstrap a 64 bit version of gcc on a plain vanilla hpux system, but I never
found out how You can achieve it. And the experts do not feel urged to share
their knowledge in this point, so leave them alone, they are very busy at the
moment (so far they were busy all the time I use gcc).

I posted a lot of help requests to the mailing lists, but nobody else seemed to
have a problem with it, so in the end I concluded that I was stupid. Famous
authors have stated that the world is full of idiots. I feel comfortable not be
alone in this world (see e.g. www.dilbert.com for details on that issue).

During my Phd-research on the never-ending story of gcc-bootstraps I found out
the following everlasting truth:

"With a 64 bit gcc it is possible to build a 64 bit gcc."

This kind of logic has some beauty and wisdom in it. It is better than a zen
buddhism koan. Read it aloud as often as possible and You will find peace of
mind pretty fast (or was it the other way round? I don't remember. We may enter
a kind of recursive approach here).

I decided this was another re-incarnation of the hen-and-egg problem and posted
requests to the mailing list, if perhaps someone could please, please be so nice
just to stop meditation for a while, tar-gzip his/her stuff and let me download
it somewhere. Please, please, pl....

No reply, and gcc developers are just too busy while implementing new
optimization algos, so no chance to get it from there. I'd like to take the
chance to say a big THANK YOU at this point for all the help I obtained. It is
always nice to obtain for-me-it-works-fine-messages from everywhere. I crawl to
Your feet as acknowledgement of my gratitude.

Finally hewlett packard offered a 64 bit precompiled gcc-3.0 on
[link|http://devresource.hp.com|http://devresource.hp.com] (hp gets it right in the end, I urge You to visit that
site). Though gcc-3.0 is a little bit buggy, it served well as a starting point.

Now since I have a hen which may lay a lot of eggs I just have to contribute to
the free software community three eggs which may be used to overcome the
paralyse gcc developers get seized with when being exposed to stupid user help
requests. It may also overcome the incredible cling of hp to their own buggy
linker, while gnu-ld in some cases may do a better job with 64 bit stuff
(but I am not sure who to blame for that).

This directory contains the C/C++/f77 part of gcc-3.0.1 for hpux-11.0 in three
different versions. I hardwired the path to binutils and included binutils
under the same prefix in order to reduce confusion caused by wrong PATH variable
settings. All three may be installed at the same time. If You dislike the
approach, well ... build Your own version starting with mine!

All these are built using at least a 6-stage bootstrap: they were built with
themself (resolving the koan from above). The builds were made on a J7000 which
was - if I remember well - patched with the March 2001 cumulative patch bundle.

To prevent another hen-and-egg-problem You also find a precompiled bzip in
bzip2-1.0.1.tar in this directory in the hope that it may be useful. And if tar
is missing on Your system, then You have a _BIG_ problem.

disclaimer:

NO WARRANTY