Get Available gcc or g++ Versions using APT

If you're a developer working on a Debian-based Linux distribution (e.g. Ubuntu), sometimes you need to know all available versions of gcc or g++ before installing or switching compilers. This is especially useful when dealing with projects that require specific compiler versions, or when testing code across multiple versions. This tutorial demonstrates how to get available gcc or g++ versions using APT.

Before querying available packages, make sure your package list is up-to-date:

sudo apt update

gcc compiler

We can use apt-cache search combined with grep and sort to extract all available gcc compiler versions:

apt-cache search '^gcc-[0-9.]+$' | grep -Po 'gcc-[0-9.]+' | sort -V

Explanation:

• apt-cache search '^gcc-[0-9.]+$' - searches for all packages starting with gcc- followed by a version number.
• grep -Po 'gcc-[0-9.]+' - extracts only the package names, like gcc-9, gcc-10, etc.
• sort -V - sorts the versions numerically (so gcc-10 comes after gcc-9).

Example output:

gcc-9
gcc-10
gcc-11
gcc-12
gcc-13
gcc-14

g++ compiler

Similarly, for g++ compiler, we can use:

apt-cache search '^g\+\+-[0-9.]+$' | grep -Po 'g\+\+-[0-9.]+' | sort -V

Explanation:

• The \+\+ is escaped because + is a special character in regular expression.
• The rest works the same way as for gcc.

Example output:

g++-9
g++-10
g++-11
g++-12
g++-13
g++-14