9.2 Version numbers

You can find the version number of gcc using the version option:

$ gcc --version
gcc (GCC) 3.3.1

The version number is important when investigating compilation problems, since older versions of GCC may be missing some features that a program uses. The version number has the form major-version.minor-version or major-version.minor-version.micro-version, where the additional third "micro" version number (as shown above) is used for subsequent bug-fix releases in a release series.

More details about the version can be found using -v:

$ gcc -v
Reading specs from /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i686/3.3.1/specs
Configured with: ../configure --prefix=/usr
Thread model: posix
gcc version 3.3.1

This includes information on the build flags of the compiler itself and the installed configuration file, 'specs'.