i was planning to cross compile using qtopia, unfortunately it only supports gcc 2.95, so i have to install gcc 2.95, my question is once i have installed the gcc2.95 , what will happen to my current gcc 3.22 ? could the paths be messed up? need detail steps on it , thank you

Um yeah it could mess stuff up. Depends on how you install it. If you install it from a package of some kind, it'll probably overwrite the newer one. Well, you'd have to force it, but it will overwrite it.

If you compile gcc from source (heh, takes a little while), you could just not 'make install' when you're done, and probably just run gcc 2.95 from its build directory whenever you need it. Of course, I don't know anything about gcc and its dependencies, so consider a second opinion.

I would recommend googling for LFS (Linux from Scratch).

Or

http://lfs.oregonstate.edu/lfs/view/.../gcc-2953.html

As the above link shows, the best bet is to compile from source. Then you can specify an install prefix when you run the configure command. Do you follow? You will need to be careful about what you affix to the ./configure command. You can run ./configure --help to get a list of options.

For instance to have all packages installed under a certain prefix run

./configure --prefix=/opt

Which will then, when you run make install, put everything under the /opt directory. This effectively separates gcc 2.95 from gcc 3.3.

Follow the boxed link at the above link to get details about making sure that c++ gets installed too.

Hope that helps.