How to Maintain Multiple Versions of the Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit on the same System

Documentation

Install & Setup

000057517

09/14/2020

The installation scripts for the Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit allow multiple versions of the toolkit to co-exist on the same system. The process to ensure that all of the toolkit files remain after an upgrade differs slightly between Windows* and Linux*.

 

OpenVINO Root Directory

The Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit installation script creates an OpenVINO root directory named with the version being installed. A symbolic link points to the most recently installed OpenVINO root directory.

  •  Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\IntelSWTools\openvino points to C:\Program Files (x86)\IntelSWTools\openvino_2020.4.287
  •  Linux: /opt/intel/openvino points to /opt/intel/openvino_2020.4.287

When you install a new version of the Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit, the installer creates a directory named with the new version number and updates the symbolic link to point to the newly created directory. The previous installation directory remains on your system and is not affected.

 

If you want to use a different version of OpenVINO that you have previously installed on your system, update the symbolic link to point to the OpenVINO root directory that contains the version of OpenVINO you want to use.

 

OpenVINO Demos, Samples, and Downloaded Models

The Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit installation provides demos and samples that help you verify the installation and demonstrate how to use the Inference Engine in your applications. When you build these demos and samples during the installation process, the build directories do not get created under the OpenVINO root directory. The directories that contain the demo builds, sample builds, and downloaded models are different in Windows and Linux.

 

If you want to persist these directories when you upgrade Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit, you will have to rename or move these directories before installing the new version of the toolkit.

  • Windows: C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Intel\OpenVINO

Simply rename the directory. For example, rename C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Intel\OpenVINO as C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Intel\OpenVINO_2020.3.

  •  Linux: $HOME/inference_engine*, $HOME/openvino_models, $HOME/omz_demos_build, where $HOME is the user's home directory.

To summarize, if you want to maintain multiple versions of Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit on the same system:

  1. Point the OpenVINO symbolic link to the desired OpenVINO root directory.
  2. Relocate or rename the directories for the demos, sample builds, and downloaded models.