Are Bitcoin Core binaries from before 0.8.6 available?

Question

Are binaries for versions of Bitcoin Core (previously called just "Bitcoin") before 0.8.6 available from any reputable source? Prior releases of Bitcoin Core were made to SourceForge, but all of the Bitcoin binaries were removed from that site after a hack. Modern binaries are hosted on BitcoinCore.org, but not for any release before 0.8.6. I'm especially looking for x86 Linux binaries from the 0.7.x series, so other questions on this site about very early versions that are Windows-specific don't help me.

My specific problem is that I would like to take a high-resolution screenshot of the dialog for sending an IP-to-IP payment, so I need a version of Bitcoin Core prior to 0.8.0. I know the source code to old versions is available, but I don't want to hunt around for ancient dependencies that will be needed to compile it. (I'm also aware that old versions have known security issues; I don't plan to operate on a public network; I just need a screenshot.)

Answer 1

Although the release binaries are no longer available, it's still possible to rebuild them using Gitian. Since Gitian includes all of the dependencies essentially pinned to the correct version, there's no need to figure out the dependencies yourself. However there is one caveat - Gitian needs to be modified to use the correct package repo for older versions of Ubuntu.

I put together a repo containing the necessary patches and instructions for using Gitian to build old versions: https://github.com/achow101/build-old-bitcoin/tree/main/0.7. Note that it only works with the docker virtualization method.