Re: switching between versions 7 and 8
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg114890] Re: switching between versions 7 and 8
- From: Bill Rowe <readnews at sbcglobal.net>
- Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:21:39 -0500 (EST)
On 12/20/10 at 12:39 AM, bitbucket at comcast.net (richard i pelletier) wrote: >i have seen, from a couple of posts over the years, that this is >obvious and elementary to many of you, but i could really use a >little hand-holding. (I have never seen an answer that i could put >into action.) >can someone please tell me _exactly_ how to set up two versions of >mathematica so that i can run either one -- not simultaneously --, >without having to go change the names of folders? >i am running version 7 on mac OS 10.6.5 -- i.e. snow leopard. i have >downloaded version 8. all i want is to be able to run version 8, >quit it, and then run version 7, quit it, and then run version 8, >etc. There really isn't any issue to this. I have both version 7 and 8 running on my MacBookPro with no problems. What I did is as follows: Before installing version 8, I renamed version 7 by renaming the installed version from Mathematica.app to Mathematica 7.app. Strictly speaking this isn't absolutely necessary. I renamed the installed version so that I could have both versions installed in the same folder. Additionally, I use LaunchBar to launch apps. By appending a 7, it is trivial for me to launch the version I want using the keyboard and LaunchBar. The above is the only thing I did prior to installing version 8 normally. There is one other thing you *may* need/want to do. If you have customized your init.m file for version 7, you may want/need to customize if further so that portions are executed only for a specific version. For example, if you had some code you wanted to execute for version 7 notebooks but not version 8 you could achieve this by doing If[$VersionNumber == 7., code] where code is the code you want executed in version 7. notebooks. So far, the only issue I have found with my setup is one third party package I have will not run correctly any more with version 7. That particular package is tied to my license ID and since installing version 8, version 7 thinks my license ID is the value returned by $ActivationGroupID in version 8.