What version of GCC is used by the make command?
Is there any way to know what version of gcc is used by the make command? I have 5 versions installed of gcc on my computer:
by dpkg -l | grep gcc
ii gcc 4:4.8.2-1ubuntu6 i386 GNU C compiler
ii gcc-4.6 4.6.4-6ubuntu2 i386 GNU C compiler
ii gcc-4.6-base:i386 4.6.4-6ubuntu2 i386 GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection (base package)
ii gcc-4.8 4.8.2-19ubuntu1 i386 GNU C compiler
ii gcc-4.8-base:i386 4.8.2-19ubuntu1 i386 GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection (base package)
ii gcc-4.9-base:i386 4.9-20140406-0ubuntu1 i386 GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection (base package)
ii libgcc-4.8-dev:i386 4.8.2-19ubuntu1 i386 GCC support library (development files)
ii libgcc1:i386 1:4.9-20140406-0ubuntu1 i386 GCC support library
Solution 1:
Open the terminal and type:
gcc --version
If that's not the version of gcc you want can change the default gcc version using the update-alternatives command to determine which actual file is referenced by a generic name, for example which actual file is referenced by gcc. For more information see the answers to this question: How to change the default GCC compiler in Ubuntu?.
Solution 2:
Makefiles often use implicit rules to compile things, rather than defining the compiler specifically. In this case, the convention (and default) is to use $(CC), which defaults to cc. So if you type cc --version, you'll see what Makefiles use by default.
The Makefile may override the definition of CC though, or not use $(CC) at all. But is the convention (as it is within autoconf for configure scripts, too).
Also see: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2969222/make-gnu-make-use-a-different-compiler
Solution 3:
make only does whatever the Makefile tells it to do. Most Makefiles will use the default gcc command, so karel's answer applies in most cases, but you should be aware that there's nothing that forces make to use the default GCC. (And for that matter, make can be used for a lot of things besides compiling C, so it might not even use GCC at all.)