This should have been sent to gcc-help. I'm redirecting this reply.
nahthan writes:
> How can a self contained gcc and g++ be created such that behaviour between
> gcc and g++ is consistent without having to set setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH?
>
> Test system: Linux 2.4.32 #1 SMP Tue Aug 8 10:17:37 PDT 2006 i686 i686
> i386 GNU/Linux
>
> g++ breaks on libstdc++.so.*
> gcc appears to be fine.
Because you have libc but not libstdc++.so.6 installed in /lib/.
If you have a look at the man page for ld.so you will see that it
looks in a number of pre-specified places for libraries. If you put
libstdc++ in one of those it will be found. Otherwise you'll need
either to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH or use the -rpath linker command.
> Why am I forced to set the library path with g++ but not gcc?
> This is inconsistent and confusing. Why don't the resulting binaries look in
> --with-local-prefix or --prefix library paths at runtime?
The binaries don't look anywhere: it's ld.so that does the lookup, and
it is not part of gcc.