Creating an Gimp "debug" user profile for experiments and plugin-development

Question

Is it possible to create an alternative User Profile folder (Windows c:\Users\{your_id}\AppData\Roaming\GIMP\2.10, Unix's ~/.config/GIMP/2.10, MacOS /Users/{your_id}/Library/Application Support/GIMP/2.10/) for plugin development purposes in the style of Visual Studios Experimental Instances designed for plugin development?

Visual Studio has this automated, but all I want, for now, is a manual approach, with a possibility later to automate this.

My solution right now on windows is was to create a new user {GimpDebugger} and use that gimp instance from my normal account to install and debug the experimental plugins, so my precious GIMP profile does not get too polluted. But that approach does not automate, neither port, very well.

Edit: Nah, creating new user to debug was to much of a hassle. I just backup my gimp profile for now and code on. But still would like a solution.

Answer 1

You can set the GIMP2_DIRECTORY environment variable before starting Gimp (in a .BAT or else) to have Gimp use a completely different user profile.

For plugin development if you just want to alter the plug-in-path that Gimp uses (to add a directory with your own plugins at the beginning) you can just replace the gimprc file:

gimp --gimprc /path/to/alternate/gimprc

Another option that can be useful is --new-instance because without it if you already have a running Gimp instance with your regular profile, issuing the Gimp command will only activate the running one.