[SOLVED] Two Firefox versions installed simultaneously?

cz0 · Last edited by cz0 on Sat Jan 20, 2018 11:42 am; edited 1 time in total

Hi, folks!
Due to need of using Java applet I need to have IcedTea (or any other JRE, IcedTea just happened to work perfect for me for ages ) plugin working in Firefox. Since some API support was removed from FF starting from version 54 and above, I have no way, but to stay using version 52.x. And this seems to be a dead end. So, I need to have two versions of FF available. Current up-to-date "unstable" 57.x for everyday use and 52.5 just for a single site for a "couple times a month" use.
Originally, I was thinking about getting VM with a Debian to get a stable predictable isolated environment for FF 52 or just compile it from a source on my current system and install under some prefix directory to keep portage clean of old version. But this can be not the best solution.
It seems that I'm OK to have versions that are in current portage. Having old FF up and running, I can always copy ebuilds to my local overlay to preserve it just in case it will be removed in the feature.
So, do I have any other options to have both in the Gentoo way? Some slot installation, maybe?

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

You can have firefox-bin and firefox installed side by side, Gentoo doesn't really offer a choice besides that, even though it could.

fedeliallalinea · Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 7:06 am Post subject:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1074496-highlight-firefox+slot.html
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cz0 · Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2018 11:41 am Post subject:

Heh.. I see.. only a firefox-bin package can be a solution. Or, as I mentioned before, a dry installation from a source code to a prefixed directory. Anyway, thanks!

Hu · Administrator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21724

The Gentoo package manager provides enough support that you could slot this. The problem is that the ebuild for Firefox does not, so you would need to create such support yourself (possibly with help from other users). This would be slightly better than a manual installation to a prefixed directory from a long term maintenance perspective. In this case, that long term gain may be outweighed by the short term inconvenience of using an ebuild instead of your manual install.