Upgrading ​

Upgrading from 1.x to 2.x ​

There are no special preparations to be made in advance to upgrading. However, please check out the following information.

Refactored features ​

The following features have changed in version 2.0, with the corresponding replacements:

• "Alire configuration" is now renamed to "Alire settings", to distinguish it from a crate configuration. This entails a few changes:

  • ALR_CONFIG environment variable is now ALIRE_SETTINGS_DIR.
  • alr config is now alr settings.
  • alr -c|--config is now alr -s|--settings.

• Installation of toolchains for use outside of Alire control is no longer done through alr toolchain, but through alr install:

  • alr toolchain --install|--uninstall|--install-dir no longer exist.
  • alr toolchain --select remains as the way to select a default toolchain for use by Alire.
  • alr install will create a standard prefix structure, with binaries found at <prefix>/bin. The default prefix location is <user home>/.alire.

Obsolete large folders ​

Changes in default storage locations mean that the following folders, if existing, can be safely deleted to retrieve disk space:

• <userdir>/.cache/alire
• <userdir>/.config/alire/cache

On Windows, <userdir> stands for %UserProfile%, whereas for other OSes it stands for $HOME.

Also, alr 2.x defaults to shared builds, meaning that local workspace caches can also be removed at

• <crate>/alire/cache/dependencies

New features in 2.x ​

Please find all user-facing changes at our User Changes log file.

Downgrading to an earlier version ​

This is not a recommended nor supported operation, as changes in storage of configuration and other resources may make a downgrade prone to failure.

If you want to have a fallback to be able to downgrade, you have two safe options:

• Use the newer version with its own separate configuration storage. You can override the default location by providing a new path in the ALIRE_SETTINGS_DIR environment variable.

• Keep a backup of your current configuration at the default location, which is .config/alire within your user's home. You can restore this folder in sync with its older alr version.