egcs is an experimental spin-off of gcc that started when people got 
fed up waiting for gcc 2.8. As the C++ standard finally emerged,
egcs people strove trying to implement as much of it as possible.
Accordingly, egcs C++ compiler is more suitable for C++ development as
gnu gcc.  Its library approaches the standard, template support is almost
complete, namespace support is coming in, it also includes a newer
scheduler (haifa) that gives improved results on HPRisc and Alpha
architecture.  

egcs is now the official gcc compiler, and the next release of OpenBSD
is going to ship with gcc 2.95.1, at least.

See http://egcs.cygnus.com for more details.
