Can I run both 4.23 and 5.x on Mac?

mirage · 01-12-2021, 04:50 PM

I've held off updating my Calibre installation from 4.23 to 5.x for plugin reasons. Mostly, I read epubs in KOReader on a Kobo device, so I don't need the KePub features, don't have an enormous library by MobileRead standards. I'm not a heavy user, though I like using the editor to clean up CSS and I edit metadata for most everything that passes through it. Those things, I realize, are not that affected by the Python 3 upgrade.

I'm using it on a Mac. I gather that the portable version is Windows only, though I could be wrong.

Can I have installations of both 4.23 and 5.91 at the same time without them sharing the same Preference files in ~/Library/Preferences/calibre?

kovidgoyal · 01-12-2021, 07:11 PM

sure you can have as many installs of calibre as you like on a mac. And if you want them to use separate config files, use an env var for it https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/cus...ment-variables

mirage · 01-12-2021, 07:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

sure you can have as many installs of calibre as you like on a mac. And if you want them to use separate config files, use an env var for it https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/cus...ment-variables

Thanks, Kovid.

A silly question, perhaps, but won't all the installations of calibre read the same instance of ~/Library/Preferences/calibre/macos-env.txt and therefore, share the same set of config files?

I realize the answer to this is probably no, but it's not clear to me how to differentiate. I'd installed side by side versions already, but 4.23 and 5.90 are using the same config directory as far as I can see. So wouldn't they read the same environment variables? How do I work around that?

kovidgoyal · 01-12-2021, 07:31 PM

Yeah they would, you would need to create a launcher script file that sets the environment variable and then runs calibre and use that.

mirage · 01-12-2021, 07:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Yeah they would, you would need to create a launcher script file that sets the environment variable and then runs calibre and use that.

Thanks. I'll look into how to do that with something like AppleScript.

01-12-2021, 04:50 PM	#1
mirage Zealot Posts: 141 Karma: 2382428 Join Date: Feb 2013 Location: California Device: OnePlus 6 phone, Kobo Clara HD, Libra H2O	Can I run both 4.23 and 5.x on Mac? I've held off updating my Calibre installation from 4.23 to 5.x for plugin reasons. Mostly, I read epubs in KOReader on a Kobo device, so I don't need the KePub features, don't have an enormous library by MobileRead standards. I'm not a heavy user, though I like using the editor to clean up CSS and I edit metadata for most everything that passes through it. Those things, I realize, are not that affected by the Python 3 upgrade. I'm using it on a Mac. I gather that the portable version is Windows only, though I could be wrong. Can I have installations of both 4.23 and 5.91 at the same time without them sharing the same Preference files in ~/Library/Preferences/calibre?

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01-12-2021, 07:11 PM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,342 Karma: 27182818 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	sure you can have as many installs of calibre as you like on a mac. And if you want them to use separate config files, use an env var for it https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/cus...ment-variables

01-12-2021, 07:31 PM	#4
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,342 Karma: 27182818 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Yeah they would, you would need to create a launcher script file that sets the environment variable and then runs calibre and use that.

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