If we build GCC out of the box from source, it's version string is not correctly parsed by the configure scripts, this can lead to erroneous warnings and failure to pass the correct flags to GCC.

For example, if we build GCC 7.3.0 from the gnu.org soruces, the version string will look like this:

===
$ gcc --version
gcc (GCC) 7.3.0
Copyright (C) 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
===

And our configure script will assign "g++ (GCC) 7.3.0" to CXX_VERSION. when I should have assigned "7.3.0".

This does not appear to be an issue for JDK 9 and later.