Is it possible IDE 1.8.1 and 1.6.13 coexist?

Hello
I wonder if Arduino IDE 1.8.1 and 1.6.13 can coexist on windows 7?
I have 1.8.1 already installed and its working fine for esp8266. Now i am trying to add OTA feature in my code but most of the help that is available on the web for OTA is based on IDE 1.6.x. I tried to install 1.6.13 alongside the existing 1.8.1 but the installer required to uninstall the installed version first.
I tried to modify some registry settings but no success.

Can anyone help?

Any help is highly appreciated.

It is certainly possible on Linux.

The Arduino IDE is just a Java program so it does not need any installing (the really nice feature of Java). Just download the file and extract it to somewhere convenient. Then you can open that folder and double-click to run the program.

...R

it gives me some hope..
If its possible on Linux then most probably same goes for windows 7.

I tried it but no specific idea how to do it. When i install 1.6 the installer ask to uninstall the already installed version first (1.8).

I tried to change the folder name of existing installation of 1.8 (C:\Program files\Arduino) to something different and then tried to install 1.6, but still the same problem.

Please help.

Maybe you should download the Windows Zip File rather than use the Windows Installer?

...R

Robin2's advice is correct for Windows. I currently have 20 different versions of Arduino IDE coexisting on my Windows computer.

  • Download the .zip files.
  • extract them into someplace OTHER than "\Program Files" (which is sensitive to having things written in it by the program.)
  • before running Arduino.exe the first time, create a directory called "portable" in the Extracted Arduino directory. This is where Arduino will put preferences, downloaded packages, and even your "sketch directory." Which means that the won't interfere with each other.
  • That does mean that if you want to load a sketch from your (shared) Documents/Arduino folder, you'll probably need to use "open" instead of "sketchbook"
  • It also means you'll have to install any new boards/etc separately for each install (but disk space is cheap!)
  • You should probably use the Installer version for the most recent version you want to run, and this alternate method for older versions. That way, you get the most recent drivers and driver-like things.
  • Oh yeah - right-click on the Arduino.exe in your new directory and select the "send to desktop" or "send to start menu" or whatever to make it easy to start up.

Thanks westf

your suggestion has worked flawless with Arduino IDE 1.8.8, even if I forgot to create the portable directory the first time. At the second run Arduino IDE has recognized the created directory and created a sketchbook directory inside of it.
Now I have two independent IDE versions: 1.8.1 and 1.8.8

As test, I've installed a library by using Tool -> Manage libraries command. The library was correctly installed in the portable/sketchbook/libraries/ directory, while the libs of the other IDE stay untouched.
8)

BTW, on Ubuntu I've simply downloaded the compressed files and extracted in one directory. After I've simply created a "launcher" on the desktop pointing to the "arduino" file in such directory.