Side-by-side installation with BC3?

[pbrennan]

I searched for a discussion of this topic in the forum, but I must be using the wrong search terms, so please forgive me: I am sure this is a duplicate post.

I want to try the BC4 beta, but since I use BC day-in and day-out at work, I don't want to risk losing functionality by being unable to access BC3. Can I install the BC4 beta side-by-side with BC3 and be able to access both? Is there anything special I need to do to enable that? Any help appreciated.

Thanks!

[Aaron]

On Windows, by default they install to separate directories: Program Files (x86)\Beyond Compare 3\ and Program Files (x86)\Beyond Compare 4\.

On Linux the side by side installation is trickier to setup. Convention dictates that the newest version should use a base 'beyondcompare\' directory and BC3 was not designed to easily transition to a multiple install environment. However, before installing BC4, you can rename your beyondcompare to beyondcompare3, then edit the scripts to point to the new location. Then, for the settings directory (~/.config/beyondcompare/), first: back up all the files currently in this directory. Then leave that named as is, but create a ~/.config/beyondcompare4 directory, which will be used by BC4.

Before performing the transition, I recommend backing up your settings as if you run into any trouble with the conversion, you'll want to be able to rollback to a regular BC3 install.