Probably he wanted to relive in the 90s where software are simple and less convoluted. Another reason at this point the modern GCC would abandon the old quirky

Probably he wanted to relive in the 90s where software are simple and less convoluted. Another reason at this point the modern GCC would abandon the old quirky .r format and instead use ELF everywhere so it might be a deliberate choice...Unless he is also trying to bootstrap GCC for Tektronix4404 which is sort of: > Bootstrapping any compiler typically requires using the existing host compiler to build some native arithmetic functions (long multiply, divide etc) on which everything else will be built. You then use your native compiler to build a (non-optimal) compile of the new compiler.