Ubuntu – How to install multiple version of GCC (GCC-3.3) on Ubuntu 16

gccsoftware installationUbuntu

I am not familiar with Ubuntu and I want to install old version (3.3) of gcc to compile some code. When I tried with 

sudo apt-get install gcc-3.3

it's not installing.

~$ sudo apt-get install gcc-3.3
sudo: /etc/sudoers.d is world writable
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'gcc-3.3-hppa64' for regex 'gcc-3.3'
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  gfortran-5 libamd2.4.1 libbtf1.2.1 libcamd2.4.1 libccolamd2.9.1
  libcholmod3.0.6 libcsparse3.1.4 libcxsparse3.1.4 libgfortran-5-dev
  libklu1.3.3 libldl2.2.1 libspqr2.0.2 libumfpack5.7.1 openjdk-9-jdk-headless
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 10 not upgraded.

When I tried to list all the available versions of gcc,

 sudo apt-cache search gcc

it's not listing gcc 3.3. How do I install gcc 3.3 on my Ubuntu?

My current gcc version is:

~$ gcc --version
gcc (Ubuntu 5.4.0-6ubuntu1~16.04.4) 5.4.0 20160609
Copyright (C) 2015 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.

Best Answer

download, compile, and install GCC from source

i typically get the tar.gz one; you can get the source from one of the mirror sites listed from gcc.gnu.org https://gcc.gnu.org/mirrors.html

tar -xf gcc-3.3.6.tar.gz
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/gcc-3.3.6
make
make install

adjust "--prefix=/usr/local/gcc-3.3.6" accordingly; i prefer to be explicit it makes things easier knowing where everything is. I think if not specified it will default to /usr/local/bin

you can do a ./configure --help to get a description of all the options available; prefix= is simply where it will get installed when doing make install and will also tell of the default install location if "prefix=" is not specified.

when using --prefix= you then need to supersede this local installation of whatever you did in your PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variables like this

*for bash*
export PATH=/usr/local/gcc-3.3.6/bin:${PATH}
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/gcc-3.3.6/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}

*for csh or tcsh*
setenv PATH /usr/local/gcc-3.3.6/bin:${PATH}
setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/local/gcc-3.3.6/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}

either open a new terminal window or first type rehash

then a which gcc will let you know the version of gcc you would be using without manually and explictly having to do /usr/local/gcc-3.3.6/bin/gcc to use it.

whenever running executables later on that have been compiled with a newer/older version of GCC make sure your LD_LIBRARY_PATH is correctly set to that corresponding GCC version.

during the ./configure step that will let you know if you are missing prerequisites so don't be alarmed if this step isn't 100% successful on first try, you will either need to download and install them or disable them by looking it up from the output of ./configure --help

  • this way you can have multiple gcc versions to your heart's content, keep each gcc install separate using --prefix=
  • adjust LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and PATH, accordingly to use whichever
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