4.0 and 5.0 side by side

[Emiliano Heyns]

Is it save to have both 4.0-FF and 50-standalone installed on one system? If I start up 5.0, can I make it create a new profile and not touch the existing 4.0 profile? I remember something about 5.0 doing an automatic migration that is not backward compatible.

[Dan Stillman]

The behavior depends on your previous settings and data directory
location, but basically, if you copy your existing data directory to
~/Zotero, 5.0 should use that by default when it starts up and will
upgrade that to 5.0 and leave your 4.0 data directory alone. You can
then choose a different location if you prefer, but once 5.0 has started
up once, it will have a data directory location saved and shouldn't try
to do anything helpful (upgrade or migration) with the 4.0 data directory.

[Emiliano Heyns]

I guess the same would apply if I just temporarily move all my existing profiles out of the way? Zotero 5 would create a new profile because it can't find any existing profiles during first start and then never look for old profiles again? 

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[Dan Stillman]

On 7/9/17 3:50 AM, Emiliano Heyns wrote:
> I guess the same would apply if I just temporarily move all my
> existing profiles out of the way? Zotero 5 would create a new profile
> because it can't find any existing profiles during first start and
> then never look for old profiles again?

Profiles aren't the same as data directories, and it depends exactly
what you do, but yes, probably. In any case, there's no real harm that
can be done here, since Zotero makes an automatic backup of the database
before upgrading it (though you should of course have your own backups
anyway).

[Emiliano Heyns]

What I'd do is move the directory which holds my ff profiles to a temporary location; Firefox would think it started for the first time. I'd then start zotero, have it do its initialization, and then move my ff profiles back. That gets me beyond "probably", right? 

[Emiliano Heyns]

Ah and while it's great that Z5 creates a backup, I am looking for a setup where I can keep using Z4, even if not running simultaneously. I'm taking the umpteenth stab at porting BBT but I can't afford not having BBT operational. So to make sure I got everything right, I could 

1. Backup my Firefox profile dir

2. Start Z5 and have it create the ~/Zotero dir

3. Quit Z5 and restore my profiles backup 

After that I could start either Z4 or Z5 and they wouldn't interfere with each other's data. Correct? 

[Dan Stillman]

On 7/9/17 8:21 AM, Emiliano Heyns wrote:
> Ah and while it's great that Z5 creates a backup, I am looking for a
> setup where I can keep using Z4, even if not running simultaneously.
> I'm taking the umpteenth stab at porting BBT but I can't afford not
> having BBT operational. So to make sure I got everything right, I could
>
> 1. Backup my Firefox profile dir
> 2. Start Z5 and have it create the ~/Zotero dir
> 3. Quit Z5 and restore my profiles backup
>
> After that I could start either Z4 or Z5 and they wouldn't interfere
> with each other's data. Correct?

Again, it depends on various things, including the location of your data
directory and the settings in your Firefox and Zotero profiles. But
you're really overthinking this. Just have a backup of your data
directory, and then you can do pretty much anything. Once 5.0 is
pointing to ~/Zotero, it won't touch anything else again.

[Emiliano Heyns]

But doesn't my 3-step list describe just that? Maybe I am overthinking things, but if those 3 steps still leave room for various things to affect my production profile, that is still a concern for me. I've been bitten by the automatic upgrade before and it was a bit of a shock, and I really can't afford to have any loss to my regular profile.