Installing a newer gcc/g++ on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

I recently had the need to install a newer version of the g++ compiler on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I documented the approach here.

Ubuntu does not typically release new toolchains for their stable versions, instead newer toolchains are made available in a PPA (Personal Package Archive) “https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-toolchain-r/+archive/test“ to use the repository we can use the add-apt-repository command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gcc-4.7 g++-4.7

Currently the PPA contains gcc/g++-4.7 and 4.8. After installing one or multiple of the newer versions we can use update-alternatives to switch between the different versions. The update-alternatives tool manages symlinks to the different installed versions and allow us to easily switch between them.

Before we add the new gcc/g++ lets check if we already have any alternatives setup by running:
$ update-alternatives --display gcc

If you don’t have any alternatives installed it will just print:
update-alternatives: error: no alternatives for gcc.

Lets see how to add an alternative:

$ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-4.7 60 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.7
$ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-4.6 40 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.6

As a default when we install new alternatives they are added to a group (in this case gcc) in automatic mode. This means that the link with the highest priority will become the default. In the case above we gave gcc-4.7 a priority of 60 and gcc-4.6 a priority of 40, so the default with be gcc-4.7
The –slave options tells update-alternative that when we change gcc it should also update the g++ links.

To check that everything is ok or to switch between the compilers we can use

$ sudo update-alternatives --config gcc
There are 2 choices for the alternative gcc (providing /usr/bin/gcc).

Selection Path Priority Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0 /usr/bin/gcc-4.7 60 auto mode
1 /usr/bin/gcc-4.6 40 manual mode
2 /usr/bin/gcc-4.7 60 manual mode

Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number: 0

That is more or less it. Running gcc --version shows that we are now using the newer version:

gcc (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.7.3-2ubuntu1~12.04) 4.7.3
Copyright (C) 2012 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.

9 thoughts on “Installing a newer gcc/g++ on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

  1. Phil

    I tried to use this method to install gcc-4.9 as you show above, but get:

    $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test
    $ sudo apt-get update
    $ sudo apt-get install gcc-4.9

    Reading package lists… Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information… Done
    E: Unable to locate package gcc-4.9
    E: Couldn’t find any package by regex ‘gcc-4.9’

    When I look at the ppa site (your link above) it definitely has a gcc-4.9 entry.

    Reply
    1. mortenvp Post author

      Hi Phil, you are right for 12.04 gcc-4.9 is not available – only up until 4.8 seems to be available. I will edit the post.

      Reply
  2. Sergiy Pometun

    Agree! Cool, that you explaned what each command does.
    I even learned some about update-alternatives.
    Thank you very much, Morten.

    Reply
  3. Andrew

    I installed gcc-5 and g++-5 just now. It works for me.

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test
    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install gcc-5 g++-5

    Reply
  4. Giampiero

    Hello,
    I installed version 4.8 on my Mint 13 (12.04 based). All was smooth, however when issuing g++ –version I still got 4.6.3 (previous installed version).
    It turned out to be the symlink in /usr/bin that had to be directed to the newly installed gcc-4.8 and g++-4.8.

    Not sure if you want to add this into control files or just leave a notice to users.

    I see you installed gcc/g++ version 5. Have you done this on 12.04 too?

    Thanks for sharing this PPA with us!
    Best
    Giampiero

    Reply

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