Ubuntu makes more or less everything Linux-related easier. Nonetheless, there are a few steps one needs to go through to build the absolute latest gcc on a stock 64-bit Ubuntu 10.10 install.

1. For a full-fledged compiler that can generate both 32-bit and 64-bit code, the 32-bit libraries are also required. Some of the dependencies also need a C++ compiler.

sudo apt-get install g++ ia32-libs libc6-dev-i386

2. gcc has a number of dependencies less usual dependencies as well. Some of these are in the Ubuntu repositories.
   

   sudo apt-get install m4 flex bison libmpfr-dev libmpc-dev

3. Install ppl (Parma Polyhedral Library) manually. Unfortunately Ubuntu does not have up-to-date versions of this package, so you have to build it yourself. Make sure to add /usr/local/lib to LD_LIBRARY_PATH or ld.so.conf
   

   wget -c http://www.cs.unipr.it/ppl/Download/ftp/releases/0.11.1/ppl-0.11.1.tar.bz2
tar -xjf ppl-0.11.1.tar.bz2
./configure
make
sudo make install
sudo echo '/usr/local/lib' > /etc/ld.so.conf.d/local
sudo ldconfig
cd ..


4. Get the gcc source from the subversion repository and build it. It’s about 140MB uncompressed and you’ll need around 500MB for the build itself. Also, I disable java as it slows down the build process tremendously (and I don’t use it).
   

   svn checkout svn://gcc.gnu.org/svn/gcc/trunk gcc-trunk
mkdir objdir
cd objdir
../gcc-trunk/configure --enable-languages=c,c++,objc,obj-c++,fortran,lto \
--with-ppl=/usr/local
make bootstrap
sudo make install