GCC upgrade

[Mark]

Hello,

I'd like tp upgrade my gcc version (from 2.95.4). I have two questions
about it, though.

1) What is the best gcc version to upgrade to? I see plenty in the ports,
from the whole 3.x series to 4.3. And I wonder why they all still remain
in the ports? So I'm not sure upgrading to 4.3 is the best idea. And even
when I upgraded to what I thought was the latest gcc (on a Vmware box), it
said:

"gcc version 4.1.2 20061103 (prerelease)"

Bummer.

2): To get ports to actually use the new one, I did something like:

asarian-host: {root} % cd /usr/bin
asarian-host: {root} % rm gcc
asarian-host: {root} % ln /usr/local/bin/gcc41 gcc

But there's plenty of 'old' gcc stuff still in /usr/bin/.

Will what I did suffice? Or am I missing some sort of procedure to get rid
of the gcc environment in /usr/bin/? Subsidiarily, will I run into
conflicts this way? (with old gcc stuff still residing in /usr/bin/).

I tested the new gcc, btw (compiled MySQL server with it, which takes
quite a while). Seems to work fine. But I'm not enough of a C expert to
know precisely how to do a safe upgrade of this kind.

Thanks,

- Mark