Best practice for multiple environments?

[Summertree]

Hey all -

I'm looking at configuring multiple environments on a single machine, so certain mods can be kept separate from each other, and also have the versions of support pieces that they need. 

 

Example - a server I play on is on 1.7.2, but I have solo worlds that use HarvestCraft, and it's still 1.6.4.  And aside from those, I'd like Galacticraft and some other BIG mods to exist by themselves (other than Optifine.) 

 

My thought was to create a profile for each environment with Forge for 1.7.2, associate each with its own .minecraft folder, and tell each which version of MC to use. 

 

Is this the best way to handle it?

[luacs1998]

The launcher has profiles and the gamedir option to accommodate this.

If you don't want to use that, though, I honestly recommend the excellent MultiMC5 ( multimc.org ).