I have fedora core 16 (64 bit) on my laptop. gcc version is 4.6.3. Now I need to test few example software source code that requires older version of gcc-4.5.1 and 32 bit linux. What is the way I can achieve this? Is Virtual machine the only solution?

Fedora 16 and 17 and 18 are all dead and unsupported

Please stay current and install Fedora 20

Fedora 20 uses gcc 4.8

you can install older versions
search yum
or
build from source

but with fedora 16 ,4 versions out of date and unsupported for over a year ????


also fedora dropped the "core" in it's name YEARS ago with fedora 7
the very LAST "fedora core" was Fedora core 6

@kirangothe : Welcome to LQ.

Suggest :
Use ``Redhat CentOS 6.5 - i686/i386´´ (Fedora 12 based) e.g. in a Virtual machine.
The default gcc / g++ version 4.4.7 will do OK, I guess.

Fedora : # yum install compat-gcc-34-c++
.. will be OK for the most older software :

$ export CC=gcc34 CXX=g++34 && ./configure

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Installed compat-gcc-34-c++ using yum install compat-gcc-34-c++ and exported the variables as you said. But I don't know from which location to run ./configuration. I will check the CentOS option if this does't succeed.

# 4 .

"$ export CC=gcc34 CXX=g++34 && ./configure" is just an example.

If you have no configure script in your application,
there are other ways to use a specific compiler.
? Which files have you got in your "example software source code" ?

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Thanks to Knudfl for his suggestions. But there is no configure script provided. The application that I had been trying to use comes with precompiled SDK libraries and some example source codes that use these libraies. As these libraries were compiled using gcc-4.5.1, I needed same compiler version for compiling these example source codes.
Taking a hint from your 1st suggestion, finally I installed fedora14 as virtual machine guest OS on fedora16 host machine. Now I am able to compile the example source codes and link them to sdk libraries.
Thanks