After merging the g77 source tree into the gcc source tree,
you have put together a complete g77 source tree.
As of version 0.5.23, g77 no longer modifies
the version number of gcc,
nor does it patch gcc itself.
g77 still depends on being merged with an
appropriate version of gcc.
For version 0.5.23 of g77,
the specific version of gcc supported is 2.8.1.
However, other versions of gcc might be suitable
"hosts" for this version of g77.
GNU version numbers make it easy to figure out whether a particular version of a distribution is newer or older than some other version of that distribution. The format is, generally, major.minor.patch, with each field being a decimal number. (You can safely ignore leading zeros; for example, 1.5.3 is the same as 1.5.03.) The major field only increases with time. The other two fields are reset to 0 when the field to their left is incremented; otherwise, they, too, only increase with time. So, version 2.6.2 is newer than version 2.5.8, and version 3.0 is newer than both. (Trailing `.0' fields often are omitted in announcements and in names for distributions and the directories they create.)
If your version of gcc is older than the oldest version
supported by g77
(as casually determined by listing the contents of `gcc/f/INSTALL/',
which contains these installation instructions in plain-text format),
you should obtain a newer, supported version of gcc.
(You could instead obtain an older version of g77,
or try and get your g77 to work with the old
gcc, but neither approach is recommended, and
you shouldn't bother reporting any bugs you find if you
take either approach, because they're probably already
fixed in the newer versions you're not using.)
If your version of gcc is newer than the newest version
supported by g77, it is possible that your g77
will work with it anyway.
If the version number for gcc differs only in the
patch field, you might as well try that version of gcc.
Since it has the same major and minor fields,
the resulting combination is likely to work.
So, for example, if a particular version of g77 has support for
gcc versions 2.8.0 and 2.8.1,
it is likely that `gcc-2.8.2' would work well with g77.
However, `gcc-2.9.0' would almost certainly
not work with that version of g77
without appropriate modifications,
so a new version of g77 would be needed (and you should
wait for it rather than bothering the maintainers---see section User-visible Changes).
This complexity is the result of gcc and g77 being
separate distributions.
By keeping them separate, each product is able to be independently
improved and distributed to its user base more frequently.
However, the GBE interface defined by gcc typically
undergoes some incompatible changes at least every time the
minor field of the version number is incremented,
and such changes require corresponding changes to
the g77 front end (FFE).
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