It is because of your settings in .bashrc and/or .bash_profile. scl appends its path to gcc7 before starting your new bash shell, but the path to gcc is default to the old gcc4 again because your .bashrc appends /usr/bin to the path when starting the new bash, and it supersedes the scl settings. The solution is to use the "enable" script directly. That way no further path settings annoy you.

An alternative of source /opt/rh/devtoolset-4/enable is

source scl_source enable devtoolset-4

The above shell script scl_source is more elegant than using a hard coded path (may be different on another machine). However scl_source does less because /opt/rh/devtoolset-4/enable uses scl_source and other stuff.

To use scl_source you may have to upgrade package scl-utils

yum update scl-utils  # old scl-utils versions miss scl_source

Quick copy-paste

echo 'source scl_source enable devtoolset-4' >> ~/.bashrc
    # Do not forget to change the version ↑

Source code for curious people

An example of scl_source source code:
https://gist.github.com/bkabrda/6435016

The scl_source installed on my Red Hat 7.1

#!/bin/bash

_scl_source_help="Usage: source scl_source <action> [<collection> ...]

Don't use this script outside of SCL scriptlets!

Options:
    -h, --help    display this help and exit"

if [ $# -eq 0 -o $1 = "-h" -o $1 = "--help" ]; then
    echo "$_scl_source_help"
    return 0
fi


if [ -z "$_recursion" ]; then
    _recursion="false"
fi
if [ -z "$_scl_scriptlet_name" ]; then
    # The only allowed action in the case of recursion is the same
    # as was the original
    _scl_scriptlet_name=$1
fi
shift 1

if [ -z "$_scl_dir" ]; then
    # No need to re-define the directory twice
    _scl_dir=/etc/scl/conf
    if [ ! -e $_scl_dir ]; then
        _scl_dir=/etc/scl/prefixes
    fi
fi

for arg in "$@"; do
    _scl_prefix_file=$_scl_dir/$arg
    _scl_prefix=`cat $_scl_prefix_file 2> /dev/null`
    if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
        echo "Can't read $_scl_prefix_file, $arg is probably not installed."
        return 1
    fi

    # First check if the collection is already in the list
    # of collections to be enabled
    for scl in ${_scls[@]}; do
        if [ scl ]; then
            continue 2
        fi
    done

    # Now check if the collection isn't already enabled
    /usr/bin/scl_enabled $arg > /dev/null 2> /dev/null
    if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
        _scls+=($arg)
        _scl_prefixes+=($_scl_prefix)
    fi;
done

if [ $_recursion == "false" ]; then
    _i=0
    _recursion="true"
    while [ {#_scls[@]} ]; do
        _scl_scriptlet_path="${_scl_prefixes[$_i]}/${_scls[$_i]}/${_scl_scriptlet_name}"
        source "$_scl_scriptlet_path"
        if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
            echo "Can't source $_scl_scriptlet_name, skipping."
        else
            export X_SCLS="${_scls[$_i]} $X_SCLS"
        fi;
        _i=_i+1))
    done
    _scls=()
    _scl_prefixes=()
    _scl_scriptlet_name=""
    _recursion="false"
fi

Redhat proposes placing a file in /etc/profile.d, i.e. for python:

$ cat /etc/profile.d/enablepython33.sh
#!/bin/bash
source scl_source enable python33

As this works for the devtools under centos for me you could try this.

It seems you could also use:

source /opt/rh/devtoolset-8/enable

Tested on RHEL7.6 for package rh-php73, it worked:

source /opt/rh/rh-php73/enable

Found the hint here

Among the directives of the Dockerfile, you have SHELL

https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/builder/#shell

from this doc

The SHELL instruction can also be used on Linux should an alternate shell be required such as zsh, csh, tcsh and others.

This option sounds dangerous to me for root. I would think something like the following would be safer and more appropriate:

You can create a function that takes command line options. Think of this as an alias on steroids. Add the following to your .bashrc

python27() {
scl enable python27 “python $*”
}

Then test:

python27 –version
Python 2.7.5

This doesn’t help with your magic line in scripts, but will make it easier to call scripts:

[smccarty@keith ~]$ cat script.py
#!/usr/bin/env python27

import sys

print “Hello, World!”, sys.version

Call it normal and notice, the default installation of python is used:

[smccarty@keith ~]$ ./script.py
Hello, World! 2.6.6 (r266:84292, Sep 4 2013, 07:46:00)
[GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-3)]

Call it with our alias, and notice that Python 2.7 is used:

[smccarty@keith ~]$ python27 script.py
Hello, World! 2.7.5 (default, May 23 2013, 06:08:09)
[GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-3)]