There's no safe way to switch between the installed versions

[Uqbar]

In Ubuntu 10.10 I get both GCC v4.4 and v4.5 installed *by default*.
In /usr/bin I can see some of the components (try "ls -l /usr/bin | grep '4\.[45]'" ).
Either a system tool (a script?) to make the switch in a safe way is missing or one of the two versions (the older?) should be installed as an option.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: gcc 4:4.4.4-1ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-28.49-generic-pae 2.6.35.11
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-28-generic-pae i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Apr 14 15:13:08 2011
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386 (20101008.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=it_IT:en
 LC_COLLATE=C
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=it_IT.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gcc-defaults

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

We don't support users switching the /usr/bin/gcc symlink, largely
because supporting this would make package builds unpredictable. Just
use gcc-4.4 or gcc-4.5 explicitly instead; most build systems support
doing something like './configure CC=gcc-4.4' or 'make CC=gcc-4.4', and
if they don't it's easy to add.

[Uqbar (uqbar)]

So why installing two versions?
Shouldn't it be up to the user to install the second one?

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

We don't normally install two versions by default. Perhaps you could
describe more precisely what you're seeing, and how you installed
Ubuntu.

[Uqbar (uqbar)]

Read 1st post. Plain xubuntu installation.

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

there is only one version installed, maybe you see gcc-4.4 left over from an upgrade. Just run apt-get remove cpp-4.4 to get rid of it.

[Uqbar (uqbar)]

I use to run "apt-get autoremove" after any upgrade.
As far as I've seen these two versions come installed by default by xubuntu 10.10 x86.
"apt-get -s remove cpp-4.4" says I would remove 106 packages and install another 109 and end up with KDE instead of XFCE.
I say this is not good for me at least.

[Uqbar (uqbar)]

I think you should just remove any bug report after three years and 5 releases. Especially when there has been clearly no effort to even try to reproduce the bug. Or read the original report.