"I've installed gcc and it seemed to go OK, but when I attempt to link any C++ program, I'm getting strange errors from the assembler! How can that be?"
The messages in question might look something like
as: "/usr/tmp/cca14605.s", line 8: error: statement syntax as: "/usr/tmp/cca14605.s", line 14: error: statement syntax
(on a Sun, different on other platforms). The important thing is that the errors come out at the link step, not when a C++ file is being compiled.
Here's what's going on: the collect2 program uses the Unix "nm" program to obtain a list of symbols for the global constructors and destructors, and it builds a little assembly language module that will permit them all to be called. If you're seeing this symptom, you have an old version of GNU nm somewhere on your path. This old version prints out symbol names in a format that the collect2 program does not expect, so bad assembly code is generated.
The solution is either to remove the old version of GNU nm from your path (and that of everyone else who uses g++), or to install a newer version (it is part of the GNU "binutils" package). Recent versions of GNU nm do not have this problem.