No, free, space, requirement. Please !
Because on my "work" area there's barely any room on C: to pass gas. There are just 25.3 MB at the moment because Opera is creating those stupid (yet very lovely) .vps files at the time of writing this.
I noticed I can open the installer with 7-zip. Why is the structure so messed up ?
- $PLUGINSDIR
$R0
$_OUTDIR
Why can't there be a "HERE ARE THE FILES" folder that I can simply extract ? Because I honestly don't see a point in using an installer for a portable application. Right click - "Extract Here". There. Install finished. If you wanna get geeky, right click - "Extract Files..." and choose for a path (like a USB stick for instance).
Why do you over complicate things ? There already is a "suite" that includes an installer. I just want to download the portable app on D:, and put it on D:. Why does it involve the drive C: AT ALL ? Please make a note of my suggestion for future repacks. Thank you.
EDIT: I had to chip away 500 MB from the pagefile just to be sure it makes it 100% intact to the C: drive and then to the D: drive (even tho I downloaded it on D:, ran it from D: and chose to install TO D:) but I also had to reboot. Twice. (Second was to put it back the way it was...) So yeah, that's a very backwards way of doing it. I'm not asking you to provide both installer versions and binary archives. Just make the installer more friendlier with WinRAR, 7-zip, etc in order to make life just a wee bit easier for some of us.
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Sorry, but it can't be done in the installers itself easily. We don't use ZIP files because they confuse quite a few non-technical users, and they can't do upgrades (unzipping a new app over an old one to upgrade will break quite a few apps... and deleting and then unzipping means you lose your plugins, fonts and add-ons for many apps). Installers are here to stay. And NSIS requires a TEMP directory to extract a couple bits to while it is running. The online installers require temp space to download the bits from the website to complete installation as well. In addition, many apps use TEMP while running for certain odds and ends.
In short, having no space on your C: drive is very bad and breaks lots of stuff. And not just with portable software. You should absolutely free that up.
That said, an upcoming release of the platform will let you set your TEMP to your portable device. Then the installers and apps will use that instead of C:. Granted, it will be much slower than an internal hard drive, but it will work.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Well, as long as you don't install anything and keep the pagefile constant (not letting Windows decide for you) you can be very happy with a 2 GB NTFS drive if you know what you're doing. At least on Windows XP. Oh, and also, TinyXP - which is less bloated, or even MicroXP if you feel like adding some (relatively small) stuff back. There's also the option to use the NTFS integrated compression if you have a decent enough CPU, which gives you another 600 MB or so for those extra program files. For a "work" area I think it's more than enough. But that's just me.
Anyway, a TEMP path from within the installer would be nice. Maybe located under an "Advanced" button or something.
The handling of TEMP will be in the Platform, not the installer; once the installer has started it can't change any of that stuff for itself as it's already using it.
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
Then an alternative should be used. Like some sort of guide on how to properly extract the OpenOffice.org contents using 7-zip or something similar.
As John has said above, this isn't viable or reasonable. And additionally, it wouldn't help. 7-Zip would use just as much space on the disk as the installer does. The installer does not extract everything to TEMP, just a few small plug-ins for the installer's own use. When it extracts everything it extracts it (and does the other things it needs to) straight to the installation directory.
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
Why not just edit your Windows %TEMP% environment variable to use the D: drive if you have tons of space on there? Problem solved.
Or you could buy a relatively inexpensive external drive and use that as dedicated temporary space I suppose. Not ideal but it would work too.
One final suggestion would be to "install" the apps using a different computer that isn't so constrained, copy the portable apps to a usb flash drive and use that as a source to copy the portable apps to your work computer as required.
In all honesty I think it's a bit unreasonable for you to expect this website and it's developers to change their entire way of working just to fit your individual needs, when you're running a system that from what you describe is lucky it even boots up in the first place.
You're right. I could set the TEMP folder(s) to point to D:. Thank you for clearing that up. You're also right about the me being unreasonable to suggest an alternative install method. In my opinion if I download something on D: and want to install it to D:, then why should that involve C: (in this case the TEMP folders) ? Why can't the installer just extract the files to D: ? I get so pissed off when I see this kind of behavior in installers. For drivers I can understand (for a possible rollback) but not software. And especially not software that's supposed to be PORTABLE.
Regarding me being lucky my system boots... I've been doing this for 4-5 years with Windows XP. If you trim the fat (bloatware) you end up with a very skinny - yet highly usable - OS. For instance, TinyXP I believe takes up around 400 MB. And if you have 2 GB+ RAM you could disable the pagefile entirely.
As mentioned, you need a working TEMP directory with some space to be able to do pretty much anything. Even if you open one of our installers in 7-Zip (or 7-Zip Portable) and drag the files out to somewhere else, guess where it extracts the files first temporarily... you got it, TEMP.
It's not using C:, it's using TEMP, which is a required part of Windows that is used by a lot of software. And our standard installers (read: not online installers) only use about 200KB of temp and only when running. That's it. If you don't have a TEMP directory setup on a drive with at least that much space, you're going to have problems with a lot of apps.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
For drag and drop within 7-zip, yes. But not if you right click and choose Extract Here, Extract Files..., or simpy open the archive/package and click the Extract button. Then 7-zip won't use any temp folder(s).
But most of the time people want to be able to open something and then move it where they want. It's the way they use the tool. My point was to show that even a simple app like 7-Zip uses TEMP normally.
The point is moot because, bottom line, your system is not configured properly for quite a bit of software. That includes nearly all installers, including ours. This is the way NSIS itself works (which we base the PA.c Installer on). We won't be modifying NSIS to work around a system with no TEMP space. You should either move TEMP to another drive with free space or repartition your drive to allocate more space to C:.
Or wait for 2.0 where you can have TEMP on your same drive, just be sure to run all apps and installers from the Menu otherwise they will use the non-existent system TEMP and fail.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
A feature for the NSIS installer would be that if I choose to install something to another drive, it should create a "Temp" folder in the destination folder. After the install finishes it simply MOVES the files to their corresponding locations (or simply the whole thing one directory up).
The current install model extracts everything to TEMP (which, of course for 99.9% of users is on drive C:), then, if your destination folder is on a different drive, it takes a few extra seconds to move it there. But we're talking about a Portable app here. For a USB stick it takes longer because first it has to extract it to C:, then move it instead of just extracting to the USB stick and moving it one directory up.
You say it *should* be, but it isn't. And, like I said, we're not gonna go doing a custom version of NSIS itself just for your specific non-standard, non-recommended (by Microsoft) situation... which is what would be required to have it use a different TEMP that what it gets from the environment variables as it starts up.
Doing TEMP on the same drive does *NOT* speed it up at all. Our standard installers (non-online, nearly all of them) only need about 200KB in TEMP for a couple DLLs they use as they run. That's it. Nothing is 'extracted' from the installer to C: and then moved to the ultimate destination. So your points are all moot.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Is the PC under your control? If not, I'd talk to the system admin and ask him to free up space. In my experience as the system admin for 100+ Windows systems, I can tell you that while a system CAN function with such a small amount free, it is far from functioning optimally. I generally recommend leaving at least 20% of the HDD free.
If you do have control of the PC, you would sure do yourself a favor if you got used a larger drive or partition. I think you'll find a significant performance boost in general, as well as having fewer issues installing portable apps.
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
Maybe it's because of the (relatively) small drive I have. A 40 GB Maxtor from back in 2003. I used to have a 5 GB C: but I found that 2 GB for the OS partition is plenty. Especially if you install most of the stuff on D: anyway. Just keep the C: drive for the OS and drivers.
In case I need to format or perform an OS reinstall I usually don't need to reinstall 99% of the apps I use. I've been doing it for years with WinXP. However, on my next PC I'll consider the extra 20% you suggested.
I don't think a 40GB drive is unreasonable but a 2GB C: partition is less than optimal in my personal opinion. In all the literature I've read on the subject I think about 8GB is considered the minimum recommended partition size for a Win XP install. I suppose if you're using some modified/optimized "tiny" version and you don't really install much in the way of software then you might be able to get away with about 4 or 5gb. I don't know that you'd want to go any lower than that. If your D partition has lots of space but your C partition doesn't then it doesn't seem detrimental to adjust the size of each partition accordingly.
40Gb should still be plenty though. The only reason that people seem to need storage that rivals NASA is because everyone is converting/download media to electronic formats these days, so everybody (it seems) has their entire music and video collection on their computer. In addition, if you play games modern games practically come with their own hard drive because they're so huge.
In my case I use a network attached storage device to hold movies and music, so they don't take up space on my computer, and I don't really play a lot of games anymore, so I only have to worry about images and documents which take up comparatively little room. I have a comparatively small (by today's standards) 120gb hard drive with 40Gb allocated to C: and the rest to D:. I'm nowhere near capacity on either partition with well over half the space available on each partition. It works for me.