It’s the official documented by Wayne Stambaugh (hauptmech’s fork (EDIT: you updated the link to the original)). It handles almost exclusively the symbol library migration, the minimal things to make v4 projects v5 compatible.
To answer again this original question: because the installer is a bit simple. I tried a simple search/replace operation with it, rebuilt and voilà: KiCad5 which doesn’t interfere with KiCad as far as the installation path, uninstaller and start menu are concerned. The environment variables, configuration folder and fp-lib-table are still problems.
Do you consider submitting a PR ?
This is now fixed, should be in the next nightly if wasn’t yet.
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Considering we’re now in rc3 phase, I’m afraid our remarks and your proposals won’t be heard, which is very unfortunate. Users who want v4 and v5 side by side will have to “hack” by themselves during the installation.
This is only for Windows so far. Some of the steps might need expanding. But it works on Win7/64 and recent nightly (after June 28). Older nightly builds do not assume the correct default paths, and you would need to setup the paths manually.
Installing KiCad v4 and v5 side by side
Refer to https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rq8i2Ay7qpGpffaj-AQmE-Xp88ikHhgyt0Ygpi8717o/edit# for more details.
Assumptions:
v4 installed in default location (C:\Program Files\Kicad)
v4 config is in C:\Users\MyUserName\AppData\Roaming\kicad
v4 environment variables are set to defaults: (C:\Program Files\KiCad\share etc)
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Make a note of the current env vars
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Delete all KiCad related env vars from system and user environment (Control Panel)
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Install KiCad v5 to C:\Program Files\Kicad5
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Create a shortcut for v5. The default shortcut will use the v4 config, so create shortcut with
cmd.exe /c "set ^"KICAD_CONFIG_HOME=C:\Users\MyUserName\Documents\kicad5\^" && start /d ^"C:\Program Files\kicad5\bin^" kicad.exe"
give it a name “KiCad v5”
- The v5 installer will have removed the v4 shortcut.
Create a shortcut for v4:
"C:\Program Files\kicad\bin\kicad.exe"
give it a name “KiCad v4”
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Start KiCad v4 and make sure the env vars are still correct. If not, edit C:\Users\MyUserName\AppData\Roaming\kicad\kicad_common
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Start KiCad v5 and check it is correctly setup.
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Rather
“C:\Program Files\kicad\bin\kicad.exe”
(To start kicad v4, not v5).
Thanks, good catch!
…
Why \Documents\ in the KICAD_CONFIG_HOME path, while the line just above indicates AppData\Roaming\kicad5 ? It would probably work, but having the config file in the AppData\Roaming\ directory looks more consistent with the previous version.
You can put the config folder wherever you like… 
Personally I find \Documents easier to access.
I can confirm the procedure works, I just tried it.
I understand, but in that case don’t indicate in the previous section (4) to optionally copy the "v4 settings directory’ to C:\Users\MyUserName\AppData\Roaming\kicad5. Or I miss something.
Oh I see, I copied some text from eeliks doc, hence the discrepancy.
Sorry to bother, but I couldn’t make the v5 shortcut working here (Win7 / 32 bits). Maybe the escape characters ^ and the numerous quotes are the cause of the failure A batch file may work (not tested), but anyway, I finally set KICAD_CONFIG_HOME with the Windows GUI (I set it as a System Variable, not a User Variable), and used the default v5 generated shortcut. As the v4 totally ignores KICAD_CONFIG_HOME, it uses its own former config directory.
I originally tested the things in the document on XP, I should try with my new laptop with Win10. There can of course be some plain bugs in the document.
Some text editor has apparently replaced simple quote marks with wrong kind of quote marks. It took a while to find the bug…
I copied that from your Google document… it seems the forum software automatically converted the quotes in some cases.
In my text editor (PSPad) it displays ok (0x22), when pasted into the forum post it displays unicode open/close quotes (0x201C/$201D).
Edit: I updated the post and it shows the correct quotes, and copy/paste gives the correct quotes in the editors I tried (PSPad, LibreOffice).
That’s fine until v6 comes along and you want to run v5 with v6…
True. Thanks for editing your post. It now works flawlessly I also modified the shortcut icon (it was displaying the cmd.exe icon) to stick with the former KiCad 5 icon.
Good idea! It’s a bit confusing with the DOS window. It would be much nicer if there was a command line argument to set the CONFIG_HOME.
I edited my post to remove the optional “copy v4 setup” step. I think that will cause too many problems.
Hey, another PSPad user! Yay!