The GNU Compiler Collection has a command, gcc, that is not the C
compiler. It is a command for calling all of the compilers.
In fact, when you compile the GNU Compiler Collection itself, from its
own source code, the gcc command is used to compile Ada code.
One is supposed to compile the Collection as a unitary whole, with all
the languages enabled that one is going to use. Then the gcc command
will know it recognizes those languages. This is how the tool was
designed. This is how it has been for a long time.
Respect your tool.
NixOS has not respected this tool. It has compiled the languages’ compilers in isolation from the others. It does not matter why this was done. It was done in disrespect of the tool.
Furthermore, NixOS does not compile the GNU Compiler Collection three times, as is the upstream default for a native build. Why is this the default? It makes the Collection self-hosting. The C/C++ and Ada compilers, at least, are then compiled with themselves. Furthermore, they are compiled with themselves twice, and it is verified that that the same result is obtained both times.
This is how the GNU C compiler has been built since version 1. It is a good system. You are preparing your tool for honest work.
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This organization seeks to respect the tools.
We will try to restore the GNU Compiler Collection to its intended form. We may or may not succeed, but we will try.
We will try to make development environments more closely resemble those of ordinary POSIX systems. We may or may not succeed, but we will try.
What good is purity and reproducibility if the tools—and thus the products of those tools—are not of the same quality as found elsewhere?
The GNU Compiler Collection on a Linux From Scratch is better than that on a NixOS system. We have no hesitation in saying so. The compilers are thrice compiled on the very machine they are to be used on.
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We will also put any and sundry here.
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The proprietor of the organization is an aging person who has been disabled for many years. Please do not overtax them. Also please respect that they may have learnt something over the years that they did not always know, and which they do not expect to be understood universally.
That one must respect the tool—rather than demand of the tool that it respect you—is a hard lesson to learn.
Not having learnt this is a cause, for instance, of people using inferior programming languages. They are demanding of the language that it respect them. Really good programming languages are designed by people who know much more about programming languages than you do. An example is Ada. It is not the simplest language to use, but that is because you must respect it. The people who designed it took into account matters you did not even know about.
Do not worry. We also use Scheme, for instance. We use Icon. We use Fortran and M4 and Awk and Zshell. But we furthermore use ATS, which embeds static proofs.
Once upon a time the proprietor made some fonts. See Sorts Mill fonts on Google Fonts. He modified FontForge so he could run extensions written in Pure instead of in Python. Pure was compiled just in time. The extensions spaced glyphs by a method that respected visual judgment but required real-time speed.