(Likely I'll get flamed by the "UNIX code should be in C" crowd ... ;-)
   
   Is it possible to use a newer version of GCC than the one which ships
   with 1.4?
   
   I've got a bunch of code which makes extensive use of templates, and the
   GCC version that ships with 1.4 has some bugs in it with regard to same.
   (I'm stuck using downrev versions of STLport and Doxygen because the 
   newer versions won't run with the old GCC :-(



check out pkgsrc/lang/gcc.  it has a port of gcc 2.95.2 which should
solve most of your c++ issues...