PortableApps.com Status Update (2010-10-09)

The latest status release is now on John T. Haller's blog here: https://portableapps.com/blogs/johnhaller/2011-02-01_status_update

Greetings all and welcome to a long-overdue PortableApps.com Status Update. It's been way too long since we've sat around and discussed the state of things, so, with some prodding from a couple devs, I thought I'd go over where things are.

New App Releases

One thing people have been concerned with has been the lack of new app releases in the past few months. We still have quite a few apps that have been stuck in Dev Test and Pre-Release phases for quite some time that have been waiting on release. One of the major holdups has been the needed update to the PA.c Format/Installer for proper working with the Updater and the new app directory, both of which are mentioned below. As the PA.c Format/Installer update is now done, I decided to start the flow of new app releases this past week with Opera, Portable Edition and SMPlayer Portable. We'll be releasing new apps on Monday to Thursdays going forward from the backlog of apps continuing with the other apps on the Outdated Apps: Confirmed Ready list and then going through the Test Releases: Pre-Releases and Apps Ready For Release topic.

Devs Update Your Apps!

On a related note, as we'll be opening up the gates on new releases, we'll need devs to update their apps to the latest PA.c Format and PA.c Installer and, possibly/optionally, switch from using a custom code launcher to a PA.c Launcher one (if appropriate to get language switching and other features working). We'll allow a period of a week or two and then begin updating older apps in-house for any apps that may be abandoned (if you don't have time right now, just update your app's main post with an ETA of when you'll have it updated). We'll still list anyone who is the original dev as "Original Developer" or similar on the app page of anything we update.

PA.c Format/Installer Update

The PA.c Format/Installer update that was needed for proper functioning with the PortableApps.com Updater has been completed and both were posted. All new apps coming out since then are already working with it. I still need to go back and update many older apps that haven't seen an update since these changes. These will likely not involve any changes to the app itself, so they'll probably be posted as a "Repack" with the same PackageVersion so that users don't need to download and install a new update to an app that's just had some installer changes. As the PackageVersion is the same, the PA.c Updater won't see them as a new version if you already have it installed.

For the curious, these changes allow an app to let the PA.c Updater know what additional files it needs to download in the case of online installers so that the updater can download both. This fixes issues with online installers run by the updater failing when proxies are involved. It also fixes some issues with silent mode installers stealing focus when run with the updater so that users can set all their apps to update and not have it interrupt their work.

New App Directory

My time this weekend is devoted to finishing up and implementing the new app directory. This will allow us to have an entirely database-driven app directory. Currently, an update requires manually editing multiple sections of the the app homepage, multiple sections of the the app homepage in German, manually updating the Updater database on the server and then manually posting a news story (this is after creating the packages and releasing the actual app and source code on SourceForge). A new app would also require an edit to the main app directory page and the app's category page in both English and German as well. This is one of the big reasons why we've been holding off on new apps and on new translations of PA.c, the sheer amount of manual work involved.

A couple days from now, however, the process will be much more automated with a single edit allowing updates to all language pages and the updater database automatically generating from that. We'll even be able to add advanced functions like being able to have a separate section for .NET apps that's automatically generated.

Project Financials

As most folks know, PortableApps.com isn't self-funding yet and has needed investments of capital in addition to the amounts we get each month from donations and ad revenue. This is one of the reasons we've been focusing on the site and platform as well as multiple behind-the-scenes hardware and software partnerships, sometimes at the expense of new app releases and community development. I'd like to apologize to anyone who thought that this work meant that their volunteer efforts took a back seat temporarily, or who felt that there apps were unappreciated. Please know that this is not the case and your efforts are noticed and MUCH appreciated.

I just did another personal cash influx to the project, so things aren't by any means dire while we finalize our commercial side. We'll also be doing a donation drive to raise a bit of capital for additional download hosting, server upgrades, promotions, legal expenses, and other things related to the 2.0 launch to keep things running smoothly independently of the projected revenues. This will free us up to work more on the code in the short-term as well.

Commercial Software

We now have commercial software contracts and licensing ready to go, finalized by our lawyer. This means commercial software will be able to package their apps in PA.c Format with the PA.c Installer for a (very) small licensing fee, helping to support the project that will expose their software to a whole new array of users. Commercial companies looking to do portable releases and get listed in the Portable App Directory just need to contact us.

Hardware Partnerships

We've been continuing to work on hardware partnerships behind the scenes. We're close with a couple large companies as well as several smaller ones. So we'll be pushing for online sales, custom runs and eventually retail.

We're also considering doing a PortableApps.com-branded drive for sale through one or more of our partners. There's been some community interest in this in the past as it's a great way to show your support (both physically and financially). We'll even be able to add some exclusive features like hardware password protection, hardware encryption and/or drive firmware and wear leveling tuned for portable app performance. This would be a small run (aka limited edition) and really only targeted at fans and devs at PA.c. We don't want to go retail and compete with partners. We don't know details on sizes and prices yet, but if we decide to do a community drive, we'll post more details as we have them.

Release Team

I'd like to finalize a new release team and get working on a way to collaborate and get things moving. The goal will be to have a set group of people who can 'sign off' on apps going from dev test to pre-release to final moving forward. Tools-wise, we can do a custom forum, email list, wiki page, IRC and/or Drupal's issue tracker to ensure that things move forward and don't get left behind. I'll be looking for any and all suggestions on this, so I've started a new forum topic for our "Release Team 2010". Please post there with interest, suggestions, etc.

2.0 Progress

The 2.0 Beta 5 release has been well received. The big delay with beta 6, the format/installer update to work with the updater, has been done. Some apps have been updated but not all existing ones, so there may be a period with some issues with some older apps updating with the Beta 6 release (hopefully not more than a few days). Beta 5 saw the code updated to Delphi 2010. Beta 6 will be updated to Delphi XE (2011) as we will take advantage of a couple new features in that.

I'm not going to announce an official release date for Beta 6 but I am pushing to release it sometime in the next week or so. If it's later, it's later, so please remember that this is *tentative*. The updater is nearly completed with the changes needed. The platform has been coming along and categories are nearing completion. Monday it's being switched to XE. And I should be able to post some more info on it at that point.

More Status Updates

I'll be switching back to doing weekly or bi-weekly status updates like this in the forums. And I will be posting some tidbits here and there on my developer's blog here on PA.c when some new feature or code warrants it. This should help everyone see what's going on even when what's happening doesn't mean you get something new to play with or use.

That's all for now. I hope everyone is well. And I can't wait for you all to see what's coming!

Best,
John