Using several PureBasic versions on Windows

Overview

It is possible to install several PureBasic versions on your hard disk at the same time. This is useful to finish one project with an older PureBasic version, and start developing a new project with a new PureBasic version.

How to do it

Create different folders like "PureBasic_v3.94" and "PureBasic_v4" and install the related PureBasic version in each folders.

When one "PureBasic.exe" is started, it will assign all ".pb" files with this version of PureBasic. So when a source code is loaded by double-clicking on the related file, the currently assigned PureBasic version will be started. Beside PureBasic will change nothing, which can affect other PureBasic versions in different folders.

To avoid the automatic assignment of ".pb" files when starting the IDE, a shortcut can be created from PureBasic.exe with "/NOEXT" as parameter. The command line options for the IDE are described here.

Note: Since PureBasic 4.10, the settings for the IDE are no longer saved in the PureBasic directory but rather in the %APPDATA%\PureBasic directory. To keep the multiple versions from using the same configuration files, the /P /T and /A switches can be used. Furthermore there is the /PORTABLE switch which puts all files back into the PureBasic directory and disabled the creation of the .pb extension.