We encourage all GMT users to start using version 4 immediately; it has been tested extensively by the GMT team and has benefitted from bug reports for the 3.4.x versions. Users who still worry about the new version breaking things may install both GMT 3.4.5 and 4 and use our utility gmtswitch to select their current version should the need to switch arises. You will find gmtswitch in the top-level GMT4 directory; install as explained below.
Because GMT 4 is backwards compatible with the 3.4.x series yet maintains its parameters and history in separate hidden files (e.g., .gmtdefaults4 versus .gmtdefaults) it is possible to install and use both versions on the same workstation. To simplify such setups we supply the utility gmtswitch which simplifies switching back and forth between any number of installed GMT 3-versions and GMT 4. Place the gmtswitch Bourne shell script in your general executable path (not in one of the GMT bin directories) and run it after you have finished installing all GMT versions of interest. The first time you run gmtswitch it will try to find all the available versions installed on your file system. The versions found will be listed in the file .gmtversions in your home directory; each line is the full path to a GMT root directory (e.g., /usr/local/GMT3.4.2). You may manually add or remove entries there at any time. You are then instructed to make two changes to your environment (the details are shell-dependent but explained by gmtswitch):