Ubuntu: live with multiple versions of gcc etc.

In the old good days, *Nix users tend to use chroot to deploy mutiple verions of development tools GCC with chroot. And Red Hat had made the life much easier with devtools. But Ubuntu has its own solution.

Read first

How to choose the default gcc version

Take action

1. Remove the alternatives

   for x in gcc g++ x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc x86_64-linux-gnu-g++ gcc-ar gcc-nm gcc-ranlib gcov gcov-dump gcov-tool
   do
     sudo update-alternatives --remove-all $x
   done
       

2. Install all of the versions

   sudo apt-get install gcc-4.8 gcc-5 gcc-7 gcc-6 gcc-8 gcc-9 g++-4.8 g++-5 g++-6 g++-7 g++-8 g++-9
       

3. Update the alternatives

   for x in gcc g++ x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc x86_64-linux-gnu-g++ gcc-ar gcc-nm gcov gcov-dump gcov-tool
   do
     priority=0
     for version in 4.8 5 6 7 8 9
     do
       priority=$(($priority + 10))
       sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/$x $x /usr/bin/$x-$version $priority
     done
   done
   
   sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/ranlib ranlib /usr/bin/x86_64-linux-gnu-ranlib 10
       

4. Change the default gcc/g++ when needed:

   for x in gcc g++ x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc x86_64-linux-gnu-g++ gcc-ar gcc-nm gcov gcov-dump gcov-tool
   do
     sudo update-alternatives --config $x
   done
       

5. Notes

   Not found: gcc-ar-4, gcc-nm-4, gcov-dump-4, gcov-tool-4.

   gcc-ar, gcc-ar-5, gcc-ar-7 are 2.26.1
   gcc-nm, gcc-nm-4, gcc-nm-7 are 2.26.1.
   gcov-dump-5, gcov-dump-7 are 5 and 7.
   gcov-tool-5, gcov-tool-7 are 5 and 7.
       

Other commands

The same logic can be applied to other software like bison, clang etc.