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foobar
Asked: 2019-10-23 02:22:34 +0800 CST

Can I remove old gcc versions?

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Using Ubuntu 19.10 which was upgraded throughout the years (starting with 16.04). I just disovered that I have multiple versions of gcc installed and wondered why (I do not develop/compile C/C++ on the device). When doing

dpkg -l | grep gcc

I get gcc-5 to gcc-9 (+ some libs and -base). When simulating a purge with

apt-get -s purge gcc-5

(and for all the others numbers as well) only gcc-9 seems to have actual important dependants (Virtual Box for me, which I use). The others only render other lib or cpp packages obsolete.

Why are they even there anyways without manual installation by me? Or not removed when they became an obsolete dependency (not even deborphan -a lists them)? I already did apt-get autoremove --purge.

Can I remove the old versions without loss of important packages/features?

package-management apt gcc 19.10

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The results of rmadison gcc show that gcc 9 is the default gcc in Ubuntu 19.10.

    $ rmadison gcc
 gcc | 4:4.6.3-1ubuntu5   | precise         | amd64, armel, armhf, i386, powerpc
 gcc | 4:4.8.2-1ubuntu6   | trusty          | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, powerpc, ppc64el
 gcc | 4:5.3.1-1ubuntu1   | xenial          | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, powerpc, ppc64el, s390x
 gcc | 4:7.3.0-3ubuntu2   | bionic          | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, s390x
 gcc | 4:7.4.0-1ubuntu2.3 | bionic-security | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, s390x
 gcc | 4:7.4.0-1ubuntu2.3 | bionic-updates  | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, s390x
 gcc | 4:8.3.0-1ubuntu3   | disco           | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, s390x
 gcc | 4:9.2.1-3.1ubuntu1 | eoan            | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, s390x
 gcc | 4:9.2.1-3.1ubuntu1 | focal           | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, s390x

    You can safely uninstall all the other versions of gcc because you checked that no other installed packages have other versions of gcc as dependencies.

    In addition to possibly having installed packages that require non-default versions of gcc as dependencies, some developers install multiple versions of gcc alongside each other because different programs that they are developing target different versions of gcc as their GNU C compiler.

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