How do I run one project using two nwProject.nwx files?

[arnehemingway]

I keep my novelWriter project in a Dropbox folder and run novelWriter on it from either a Mint 22 machine or a Mint 20 machine.
The Mint 22 machine runs v2026.1.2 and the Mint 20 machine runs v2.7.5 which I believe is the latest version of nW that runs with my older GLIBC. So now when I open my project with v2.7.5, I get

Fair enough. I've done a light comparison to see what I'm losing and as far as I can tell, I lose only some <status> and <importance> icons and colors, but I'm still not wanting to lose those when I open my project up again with v2026.1.2.
So I've come up with an idea to use two nwProject.nwx files:
nwProject.nwx.work
nwProject.nwx.home
If run from my work machine, the script will simply rename nwProject.nwx.work to nwProject.nwx before invoking novelWriter. If I run from my home machine, the other file will get renamed prior to running the program.
I realize this is somewhat inelegant but I'm loathe to upgrade that Mint 20 box as it runs real good and fast right now on some pretty limited hardware.
Can you tell me if this plan will work? Or is there some other attribute and setting I'm not seeing that will get messed up?

[vkbo]

The nwProject.nwx tracks all entries in your project tree too though, so if a new folder or document is added in the one file, they will be lost when you switch. Document will be re-added as recovered files, but folders will be lost.

But worse than this is that from release 26.2 and on, you won't be able to read the documents themselves either if you switch between 26.2 and earlier version. The documents themselves will be fine, just not readable by the app so they will be empty when you open them.

The dialog message really understates the risk if the difference in version is large, but I can't really go back and change it in older versions. You should definitely avoid mixing versions like this though.

[vkbo]

I'm bumping the project file format version before the 26.2 release actually. This will block any attempts at opening the project in an earlier version that will fail to load the document content, which may freak out users even if it is technically harmless.

[arnehemingway]

Boy, I'm glad I asked. I guess I have to bite the bullet and upgrade my older Mint 20 machine. Until then, I'll use novelWriter 2.7.5 on both machines.
Thanks for the detailed explanation.

[vkbo]

From next release there will be dedicated Mint 22 packages at least. Mint 20 is unfortunately shipped with too old a Qt library.