If you haven't noticed, there was a change in baselayout-2.4 that moved the default PATH setting from /etc/profile into /etc/env.d/50baselayout. This change allows other packages to prepend or append their PATH settings by installing files before or after sequence 50 in /etc/env.d. See bug 255695.
This has the immediate effect of moving the toolchain-related PATH settings (00glibc, 04gcc, 05binutils) to the left of the "default" system PATH. This wasn't necessarily intentional, but it should make for a minor performance improvement since gcc-wrapper is bypassed. I haven't noticed any problems. More generally, this change occurred a couple of months ago, and there doesn't appear to have been any major fallout in ~arch. However, bug 629846 was opened today, which made the suggestion that we make a more public call for testing. So, if you maintain a package that installs a PATH setting in /etc/env.d, please check it to ensure that it is not causing conflicts with binaries that live in the default PATH. If needed, consider moving them to the right by choosing a number higher than 50.
