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Rocket Dock and relative paths.

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Anthony A
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Last seen: 7 years 1 month ago
Joined: 2007-11-28 16:33
Rocket Dock and relative paths.

I am using Rocket Dock Portably and have no problem adding programs to the dock and keeping the paths even when the drive letter changes on my thumb drive form machine to machine.

One problem I do have is that I have added a folder to the dock. In that folder I have placed short cuts to some of my portable apps. I do this to get quick access to my apps without having to go to the System Tray and click the Portable Apps Start Menu icon. The problem is that the short cuts in the folder do not stay relative when the drive letter changes. The folder they are in does but not the short cuts. I keep the paths of the folder and other programs on the dock relative by removing the drive letter at the beginning of the path. Problem is Windows won't let me do that for short cuts. Is there a way around this?

Bruce Pascoe
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Last seen: 12 years 9 months ago
Joined: 2006-01-15 16:14
Nope.

This has been covered before. Windows doesn't support relative paths in shortcuts because they were only designed to be used locally. What you can do is to create a batch (.bat) file to mimic a shortcut, and use a path relative to the .bat file.

Like this (assuming this .bat file is in the root directory):

@echo off
"PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\FirefoxPortable.exe"

The @echo off is there so that Windows won't leave the console window open when the batch file is done executing.

TaffinFoxcroft
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Joined: 2006-12-14 17:24
close, but you forgot one

close, but you forgot one thing. that has a dos window in the background until Firefox Portable is closed.

@echo off
start "PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\FirefoxPortable.exe"

btw, the @echo off sets it so that it doesn't echo any commands back to the dos window. so if you save that as a batch file without the @echo off it would display start "PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\FirefoxPortable.exe" before the window closes.

But there’s no sense crying over every mistake,
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

Bruce Pascoe
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Last seen: 12 years 9 months ago
Joined: 2006-01-15 16:14
...

Yeah, I know what the purpose of @echo off is, but I remember reading somewhere that if it's first line in a batch file, it also has the side effect of closing the command window when it's done, rather than leaving it open (presumably since if no output was created, there's no need to leave it open).

AtmanActive
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Last seen: 13 years 8 months ago
Joined: 2010-01-25 06:27
RocketDock v1.3.5 rocks!

Just tried RocketDock v1.3.5 and fell in love with it.

It is now, completely portable.
No need to install, just UniExtract it.
It can save all of it's settings to same-folder ini file, and it can use real portable paths in any path input field (paths like ..\..\SomeFolder\MyApp\go.exe).
It is not so obvious because it will by default insert full absolute path after some drag & drop action, but you just go into edit settings and manually change absolute path to relative one and it works like a charm.

Combined with it's StackDocklets extensions it really, really gives endless possibilities. And it looks awesome too.

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