Unfortunately, no; this does not satisfy my use case.  While this is still a welcome new addition to VIPM as a whole, this web based tool cannot search our private repositories.  If this same new search functionality (with partial word search added) is ever rolled into the main desktop product, it will then indeed satisfy my use case.

I came here to make this very suggestion (solution #2) if it were not already suggested (which it is).  I agree with Michael that solving this on the package install side (solution #1) invites too many problems.  However solution #2 is exactly what I need.  There are some scenarios that require me to develop a solution in a more recent version than what the tool must be backward compatible to, so developing in the older version is not always an option.  Sure, the "Save for Previous Version" method might certainly fail sometimes; but then VIPM could detect the failure and alert the developer.  Getting the backsave to work properly would then be incumbent upon the developer, but this would be true with or without the help of VIPM.  I'm voting for this!