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Are portableapps in http://portablefreeware.com really portable?

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silentcon
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Are portableapps in http://portablefreeware.com really portable?

They have some freewares also portable. And i wonder how they create programs portable so fast and why their portables are in a .zip(it can be they uniextract it then zip it.).

John T. Haller
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Directory

portablefreeware.com doesn't develop or package anything. They publish a directory of software that is already portable. Many of the entries in it are what we refer to as the "just work" variety and will leave stuff behind or have things break as you switch PCs.

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m2
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have things break as you

have things break as you switch PCs.

Such as?

Because of different definition of portability, leaving stuff behind is permitted there and indicated by non-stealth mention. Breaking is not.

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MRU, Language Selection, etc

Most recently used files list (most apps), last opened file re-open (handy with apps like KeePass where you only have one "file" - aka database - that you ever open), language selection (some apps use a full path to the language file in the settings so you have to reselect on each launch), some plugins and addons (which are also full path), etc.

Many people are fine with the above, of course, so as long as you know what to expect, it's fine.

And you can't always go by the "Stealth" indicator. I've often seen apps listed as stealth that are not and apps listed as not stealth that are in the past.

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m2
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Can you show such apps

Can you show real examples? MRUs - sure, hardly any program keeps them and I really wouldn't say that this makes them break, but the other things sound more serious.
Mistakes happen and if some app that has such issues is added there, it would be good to send Andy some erratum.

OT: how do PA.com apps handle MRUs? I'm especially interested in what do they do with references to local files.

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John T. Haller
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Sure

KeePass was already listed as an example of last opened file. There are a couple apps where you're using a database like that and normally only have one and want it opened on every launch, but it's not that common.

MRUs are pretty common in lots of apps. Most apps that deal with opening and closing of specific files, in fact. SumatraPDF, Notepad++, AbiWord, Audacity, etc. And some apps use things like sessions to manage sets of open files, which can be handy when working on a project. Notepad++ does. It does it out of the box in fact, so you can keep, say, your HTML, CSS and JS files for a given site all open at once and have them quickly open next time. All that breaks with the portable zip of Notepad++ listed at portablefreeware.com.

The language file I can't recall which apps offhand. I know it kept a full path to the language files used in its settings file (something like Lang=D:\someapp\langs\french.lang) and it didn't like relative paths. There was a workaround for at least one of them and it was to rename the one you wanted (something like french.lang) to the default (english.lang) but that was listed further down the comments and not in the main post. Another one didn't have a workaround. I thought I remembered one as being KeePass, but I checked and that wasn't it.. or at least isn't it any more. If I remember, I will post.

As for the stealth ones, an example is that they always listed Notepad++ as stealth even though it left behind at least one registry entry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Notepad++_file) if you were logged in with admin rights as people sometimes are. I think Notepad++ may have fixed this in recent releases, but it was still wrong in their listings for over a year. For comparison, they list Thunderbird Portable as not stealth though it is by their definition... it's hard to tell what they're referring to as there is no explanation as to what was found. Sunbird Portable, which works the same way as Thunderbird Portable, on the other hand, is correctly listed as stealth.

As to how we handle MRUs, what we do is monitor to see if the drive letter changed between the last time you ran it and now. If it did, we update the MRUs (as well as sessions in apps like Notepad++, settings files for plugins and custom sounds, etc) from the old path to the new one. So, any apps you were working with from the portable device will open just like they did the last time you ran it. As for local files (files on a path other than your portable device) we leave those alone on the off-chance that they're still there... so if you unplugged from your main PC and plugged back in later and got a different drive letter, your files would still open. We thought it would be more user-friendly than simply removing the entries.

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m2
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I skipped MRU thing.

I skipped MRU thing. According to pf.com definition, saving it is not required. BTW do I remember correctly that it wasn't always required here either? Wink

Yes, I N++ indeed had some entries in the registry, but it was marked as non-stealth int the database before. Possibly N++ devs fixed it, I'll check it later.

There's a topic about Thunderbird not cleaning after itself:
http://portablefreeware.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1854
And similar about FF:
http://portablefreeware.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1845

MRUs:
I think that it's dangerous to leave local ones, you can open another file with the same name and path. In case of a text editor it's just a minor annoyance in rare cases and much more often a nice feature, but i.e. in case of Firefox this might cause execution of some unknown script. I suggest: be careful.

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John T. Haller
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Out Of Date

I guess they just never really update the entries. Those were bugs that were introduced in a specific version of each app and then fixed well over a year ago.

I remember N++ being marked stealth for months when it wasn't, long after we'd handled the registry entry in our launcher.

Apps like Firefox don't have MRUs, so it's not as much of an issue for normal end users. It would really only apply to development tools, I'd wager. And the chances of you having something in the same location on an unknown PC that may be malicious vs yours which isn't, opening that file by accident, not realizing that it wasn't yours and then having it run or do something is pretty small. Plus, since the non-PAF version would have the same issue (it would still link to local files though all the portable files in the MRU would break), it wouldn't be any more or less of an issue.

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m2
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You know it's impossible to

You know it's impossible to test every version of every program. The site is driven by user submissions verified by staff and nobody reported FF/TB to be fixed yet.

There is a discussion on PF forum that mentions N++ as marked non-stealth and being such. It was 6 months ago, so the database was updated during this period. As I said, I'll check it later.

MRUs: Local programs don't have the issue. Well maybe with removable drives, but here user has more control of it. Launchers are meant to fix the issues that arise when using programs portably and it is one of them. Yes, definitely a rare one, but potentially dangerous.

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John T. Haller
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Oh, I know how it works. I just meant that the Firefox and Thunderbird entries have been wrong for about 1.5 years. And the Notepad++ entry was wrong for at least 6 months before they caught it. I'm just saying that you can't really rely on their listing of an app as stealth or not.

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m2
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Bugs happen. If you want to

Bugs happen. If you want to be strict, there's no place you can trust. As the FF example shows, one can't trust PA.com either. I believe that in great majority of cases they stand correct. That's about as good as "In great majority of cases PA.com app is drive letter portable".

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Chris Morgan
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Huh?

What is this about an "FF example"? There is nothing wrong with our app, and to the best of our knowledge never has been. MRU lists are going to be just as perfect (or possibly more so) as local installations.

Name me an officially release app which does not do its MRU properly, or which can possibly include anything locally which could be harmful which could be avoided. Firefox can't: its profile is on the USB disk, and it loads plugins from the local drive, which can't be avoided. Any new ones it will tell you about, as well.

I trust PortableApps.com applications. Thus, I make sure that when I make applications for PortableApps.com, I make them so that they can be trusted by others. Being a perfectionist does have some side-effects, I try to make Development Test 1 perfect, and so I take longer developing... DT3 is the highest I've got on any of my apps. (Feel free to ignore the anecdote in the rest of this paragraph and skip to the next paragraph. :P) One time there was an unfortunate slip, in the release of 0.4, where I had not been the one that actually bundled it up, but that's what revisions are for. The problem was just missing DLLs (GDI+ and MSVCR71) which made it not work if they weren't installed on the system - but it was still portable, if anything, more so ;-). And the problem has been rectified and I'm ready to commit it to BPBible's SVN repository... except I'll have to get a new working copy as Subcommander broke my working copy Sad Really, I reckon BPBible is a model PortableApps.com application - I have committed a few chunks of code to make my PortableApps.com edition work better. Biggrin

In all cases, PortableApps.com™ applications are portable across drive letters.

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m2
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I suggest that you read the

I suggest that you read the topic you're replying too. I mentioned past FF nonportability (PA.com portability) and JTH confirmed that this happened some time ago.

And even if it didn't, you shouldn't trust that it never will. He who makes no mistakes, makes nothing. Even mozilla distributed virus infected software at some point. It was in exotic language pack.

"Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." Asimov

solanus
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I don't know how common breaking really is

I use a mix of apps from here, WinPenPack, and PortableFreeware.
I prioritize them in that order:
If I can get it from here, I do; then I check WinPenPack, and then at last PortableFreeware. If any of the apps show up here later, I switch to the PortableApps.com version (unless it is too far outdated).

I can't recall any time that I've had a real significant break with any of them.
The most serious one I can recall is the output path in CDex (but there is a great post here https://portableapps.com/node/11388 that tells you how to edit the ini file to fix it)

Other than that, all the apps I've needed to use seem to work OK - maybe they might leave more behind than I'd like, but they do work.

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