How to enforce already installed gcc-ar to use specific binutils version?

I've built GCC 4.9.3 from sources and installed into my home directory with some prefix, e.g. gcc4.9.

Now I want to use a newer version of binutils along with GCC 4.9.3. I've built them and installed separately in my home directory, with prefix binutils2.26.

How I can force gcc-ar from gcc4.9 to use ar from binutils2.26 instead of system one? It always calls /usr/bin/ar and looks like there is no options to specify. Replacing /usr/bin/ar somehow is not an option - I don't have root access on this machine.

Solution

I managed to fix this issue.

Using strace, I found that gcc-ar looks for ar in several directories, including <gcc install dir>/libexec/gcc/x86_64-redhat-linux/4.9.3.

So the obvious solution is to create links in this directory targeting corresponding binutils2.26 executables:

  cd "<gcc install dir>/libexec/gcc/x86_64-redhat-linux/4.9.3"
  for file in ~/binutils2.26/bin/* ; do ln -s "${file}" ; done

After that all, executables in ~/binutils2.26/bin will be replicated as links in the GCC 4.9.3 directory and will be used automatically when building by that GCC version.