Is there any advice on how to set up both a Test version of Obsidian, as well as the last production version of Obsidian on the same Mac?
I get into lots of trouble either trying to get things to work again after an insider build, or trying to see why a feature no longer works as I thought it did.
I think I need (1) the production version and (2) a version of the insider version. The insider version would need to use a different name for the config file (.obsidian) so that both versions could access the same vault.
In that way we could test for differences.
It also would be wonderful to have a way of setting all one’s settings with a script or text file, as it is tedious to take photos of your production vault settings pages and re-establish those same settings in another vault you want to use for testing.
People that are testing insider builds must have a way to easily go back to an older version that worked…
I keep two vaults around currently. One for test and forum questions, and one as my main vault. I like to keep these seperated as I do all kind of stuff in my test vault, and install/uninstall/modify plugins and so on.
I reckon you could do similar stuff related to a test and production vault, by setting up a local (possibly just one-way) sync of the actual vault files, and then use the official release on the main vault, and the insider on the copy.
Another possible option would be to setup a system syncing just your settings into to two different folders, and keep one folder for production settings and one for insider settings. I’ve done that in the past for similar issues, and it does work, but it’s very easy to “forget” to resync/change configuration after playing around with the other settings for a while.
Vaults and syncing aside, AFAIK you can’t (for example) run Obsidian 1.1.9 and 1.1.12 in the same user account without playing the delete .asar->restart->test->re-download the insider .asar dance (which is tiresome). I think the best options are
Different user accounts for different Obsidian versions.
VMs with different Obsidian versions.
I have a few Windows and macOS VMs that were set up for something else, but one has Obsidian 0.15.9, one v1.0.3, and one 1.1.9. All sync my main vault and a test vault via Obsidian sync (all vault config sync toggles OFF except for themes/snippets). That’s worked for me.
I can run Parallels on my Mac and test inside windows, having a different version of obsidian working there, but I’d like to stay on the Mac platform. I don’t know how to run another Mac in Parallels --don’t think it can. Maybe the idea should go into “things to consider for development” as I think it would make testing easier.
I tried the portable v.0.15.9 and v.1.1.9 from your link (thank you!). They both read my \AppData\Roaming\obsidian folder, see the 1.1.12.asar, and run as 1.1.12. Is there a way to have them ignore AppData? Thanks.