Portable Application Template 2.6 released

Your template works perfect! Very cool! Thanks alot!

quicky

Karl,
I was unable to get the Registry.reg manipulating code to work with the .reg file stored as "portableappdir\Data\Registry\Registry.reg". The file was not found at all. I put in some MessageBox printouts and learned that the code wanted the Registry.reg file stored in the Data directory itself, as "portableappdir\Data\Registry.reg". I may have misunderstood your directory setup instructions at the bottom of the file but I think they say that the Registry.reg file is supposed to be put into the "portableappdir\Data\Registry" directory. If the code is supposed to work with the Registry.reg file in this directory then I think your code needs to have this modification:
(using as an example one of the lines that manipulate the Registry.reg file:)
IfFileExists "$DATADIR\Registry.reg" 0 InitRegUseVar
changes to:
IfFileExists "$DATADIR\Registry\Registry.reg" 0 InitRegUseVar
Did I misunderstand where the Registry.reg file is supposed to be placed?
-- Don

Hi Klonk,

while using Your PA Template 2.5 with an application making use of GTK I noticed that You're adding the path of the "portable" GTK to the end of the PATH environment variable. This is fine as long as the user doesn't have a path to a GTK installation in his PATH. If (s)he already has one, that version would be used instead of the "portabe" GTK. To remedy this situation one should prepend the path, to the "portable" GTK installation, to PATH instead of appending it (as it's done in 2.5 - and in earlier versions too, I assume). This will make the PAT-based portable application pick up the right installation of GTK.

To accomplish this one has to change line 594 from reading:

System::Call 'Kernel32::SetEnvironmentVariableA(t, t) i("PATH", "$R0;$GTKDIR\bin").r0' ; set new path

to read:

System::Call 'Kernel32::SetEnvironmentVariableA(t, t) i("PATH", "$GTKDIR\bin;$R0").r0' ; set new path

This will give the "portable" GTK installation higher precedence.

The same is true for USEJAVA, 5 lines higher up in the template.

How does NSIS work?

Is there any chance of having a setting at the begining of the script that can add folders to the Path?

It would be handy to be able to add a sub folder, in the App directory, to the Path so that the portable app can get access to it.

Cheers Rochey

After some days of reading code and forum posts I have a question and a request.

Scenario: I am trying to use this fantastic template to portablize WinPT. The registry keys are put into registry.reg as such

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WinPT]
"Extensions"="1"
"nKeys"="0"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WinPT\Keyserver]
"Default"="http://wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\GnuPG]
"HomeDir"="E:\\PortableApps\\CommonFiles\\gpg\\Data"
"gpgProgram"="E:\\PortableApps\\CommonFiles\\gpg\\App\\gpg.exe"
"OptFile"="E:\\PortableApps\\CommonFiles\\gpg\\Data\\gpg.conf"

program loads and runs fine, however on exit the registry.reg gets overwritten with.

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\GnuPG]
"HomeDir"="E:\\PortableApps\\CommonFiles\\gpg\\Data"
"gpgProgram"="E:\\PortableApps\\CommonFiles\\gpg\\App\\gpg.exe"
"OptFile"="E:\\PortableApps\\CommonFiles\\gpg\\Data\\gpg.conf"

The GnuPG keys are properly removed from the registry, but the WinPT key is left behind.

Question: Any notion as to what I am doing wrong?

Request: Would it be possible to use variables in the registry.reg so that it may look something more like

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\GnuPG]
"HomeDir"="{PORTDRIVE}:\\PortableApps\\CommonFiles\\gpg\\Data"
"gpgProgram"="{PORTDRIVE}:\\PortableApps\\CommonFiles\\gpg\\App\\gpg.exe"
"OptFile"="{PORTDRIVE}:\\PortableApps\\CommonFiles\\gpg\\Data\\gpg.conf"

I would think using WordReplace in the RegFileToStack could take care of the replacing it on the way into the registry, but I have no idea how to have it do the reverse when exiting.

Thank you very very very much.

What about making this a portable tool? After all most of us, even those using NSIS, may not keep or keep up to date most of the stuff required by this template.

What I'm suggesting is to create a compressed file with NSIS, UPX, plugins... and the template. People would simply need some editor (VIM, EclipseNSIS) additionally.

That's just a suggestion.

Still it has many good features and doesn't slow down much. The coding style is also way cleaner than the spaghetti code of the official releases.

I'm currently changing to remove the extra stuff that I believe is not needed: Copy app files, creation of INI, copy source files, etc. and I split the file in two. The launcher and the settings which are application specific (with some callbacks for advanced stuff possible). I also fix some issues:
- Terminate only after the last process quit.
- Clean registry and faster by renaming registry keys.
- Other stuff.
This way the launcher can be updated (to fix something for example) while keeping the script settings untouched.

I may post it here if people are interested.

Cool! But, which is better, portable app creator, or this. Actually, maybe you two should team up. Also, to make it more portable, is it ok to use both applications on a program I want to make portable?

Edit: Now that I look at it, PAC looks a bit more user friendly.

ok, on this specific computer i can't access the ragistry at all. regedit dosn't work. saving a .reg fiole and merging it dosn't work. i thingk its a group policy thing, so theirs no way around it. will the program still work?

This template is great. Very helpful. The code is also very readable (as another user commented). Kudos.

I have one tiny nit: the template should have a 'long name' and a 'short name' macros. For example, some apps may have spaces in their official, 'long' name (e.g., "Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition"), while the exe and folders should probably not have spaces and use a 'short' name (e.g,, "FirefoxPortable").

In the current template (2.5), I got around this by changing the DESCRIPTION macro (line 88) to be the 'long' version and then changing lines 226 and 230 from this

VIAddVersionKey /LANG=${LANG_ENGLISH} "ProductName" "${APP} Portable"
VIAddVersionKey /LANG=${LANG_ENGLISH} "Comments" "Allow ${APP} to be run from a removeable drive. This launcher is based on the Portable Application Template created by Klonk (Karl Loncarek)."
VIAddVersionKey /LANG=${LANG_ENGLISH} "LegalCopyright" "Launcher created by ${AUTHOR}"
VIAddVersionKey /LANG=${LANG_ENGLISH} "CompanyName" "by ${AUTHOR}"
VIAddVersionKey /LANG=${LANG_ENGLISH} "FileDescription" "${APP} Portable"
VIAddVersionKey /LANG=${LANG_ENGLISH} "FileVersion" "${VER}"
VIAddVersionKey /LANG=${LANG_ENGLISH} "OriginalFilename" "${PNAME}.exe"

to this

VIAddVersionKey /LANG=${LANG_ENGLISH} "ProductName" "${DESCRIPTION}"
VIAddVersionKey /LANG=${LANG_ENGLISH} "Comments" "Allow ${APP} to be run from a removeable drive. This launcher is based on the Portable Application Template created by Klonk (Karl Loncarek)."
VIAddVersionKey /LANG=${LANG_ENGLISH} "LegalCopyright" "Launcher created by ${AUTHOR}"
VIAddVersionKey /LANG=${LANG_ENGLISH} "CompanyName" "by ${AUTHOR}"
VIAddVersionKey /LANG=${LANG_ENGLISH} "FileDescription" "${DESCRIPTION}"
VIAddVersionKey /LANG=${LANG_ENGLISH} "FileVersion" "${VER}"
VIAddVersionKey /LANG=${LANG_ENGLISH} "OriginalFilename" "${PNAME}.exe"

e.g., they use "${DESCRIPTION}" rather than "${APP} Portable".

I have 2 comments/changes that I think would help with PAF compatibility.

1. The registry entries should be saved as ${APP}.reg

2. All the settings should go under ${App}Portable\Data\settings\

I think this is the way all the apps on this site are headed if they aren't already formatted this way. Hopefully you can update this for the next version.