Well we were supposed to have beta 6 in July and the final of 2 by the end of July.
Its now nearly September and we haven't had any.
Any progress on any of these or is it a dead duck.
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CROAK!
Time for Canard à l'Orange!!
Seriously, is there a point to your post?
Getting petulant won't make things happen faster.
And, John's put over 5 years of his life into the project, without making money, and is actively working to change a lot of the supporting apps and code (the installer, the launcher) which also means updates to all the apps. I really doubt that he's slowing down, but if he is, so what? He's got a life and needs to make a living, too!
Quack!
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
I don't think it's dead, I just think there are some key issues to iron out and John doesn't want to release a half-@$$ed product. I suppose your impatience could be taken as a sign of misdirected enthusiasm and John's failure to meet (self imposed) deadlines as a sign of commitment and dedication to providing something worthwhile.
It's all good.
My big B6 feature (being able to add apps from the update program) is already present in B5 but not "Baked" yet.
If this is your big wanted feature then in a command line run
portableupdater.exe /MODE=ADD
and have at it.
is impatient.
It doesn't help none. PortableApps.com isn't like Google with 20,000 employees working with wages as their day time job.
Rather its a few dozen people working on their spare time either trying to work and support a family or trying to get outa school as quick and painless as possible. (well, maybe that second part was just me)
Life happens, development slows, deal with it.
Every time someone complains, the release date will double.
an angel gets its wings.
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
It's always good for a laugh though isn't it?
You know I see this all the time this year. Someone says a date to release and it does not happen and then people get upset and then those not upset try to justify everything. The thing that I have learned in life is integrity is the only thing people cannot take from you. I know in development there are things that come up, however if one is going to put it out there then that time line needs to be met or a nice explanation of why settles the integrity failure some.
I surely do not think that people should be trying to justify why this or that has not happened as it was told it would. Either integrity was kept or it was not. I am not writing this to start a forum flame war! I am writing this out of love hoping that everyone on this site that may have had integrity failure in the past can learn and we all move forward. I appreciate what John and others have done here and would love to keep silently supporting along with praying for all those that have their hands working.
If I have offended anyone with this post I ask that you please forgive me, as that was not my intention.
There was no set date for the next beta. It was stated that we would be releasing additional betas about every week or two when we released Beta 5. Then, during the testing and bug reporting phase of Beta 5 (and mentioned in the same forum thread), it was found that not only would bugs need to be fixed in the updater and menu, but also the PA.c Installer. That meant every single app (and every single language pack of every app) needs a repack with the forthcoming PA.c Installer 2.0.3. At that point, we said it would be done when it's done (which is our official response anytime anyone asks for a hard date).
So, there is no date being missed here. And volunteer, unpaid developers tend to get a little annoyed when someone using a free app feels it is their right to make demands on the time of someone who is under no obligation to them.
So for anyone not up to speed. Beta 6 will be released when it is done.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I completely agree.
Guys, John has been exceedingly patient with a lot of complaining. How about we stop complaining and start helping now.
You want a quicker Beta 6 release? Great, help write some code. Can't code? Maybe you would be willing to learn to use the PortableApps Launcher to get some more apps portabilized. Don't want to learn to use PAL? Help us test the existing apps (yes, this includes Beta 5 of the Platform - feedback is always welcome).
If you can't code, and don't feel like learning to use the PortableApps Launcher, and don't want to help test, at least donate. That's a good way of telling John "hey, we appreciate what you're doing", and much better than complaining when the new beta isn't out quickly enough for you.
Believe it or not, donating may actually help get Beta 6 out faster - John has a regular day job, just like the rest of us, so he has to work on PortableApps stuff on his free time, just like the rest of us. Enough donations might let him take a little time off to work on the Platform, Installer, etc. More time on the Platform = a quicker Beta 6 release, which appears to be the universally desired goal here.
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
If i have my head on straight the biggest feature of B6 would be the ability to do the initial load of the apps from the update program. As it happens this feature is not "baked" yet but is in fact present in B5 (as previously stated run portableupdater.exe /MODE=ADD from a CLI and have at it).
I don't know about the rest of you but i can wait.
Well, well, well, I don't have any technical skills, so I certainly can't help.
But let me say that beta 5 works perfectly for me. I use it to keep three systems up to date.
All I have to do now is to update windows, push one button and all my apps will update.
So here is to you, John. It's wonderful concept and a wonderful piece of software.
Thanks for your work, dude!
Ditto what Just Peggy said.
I'm not really waiting for the whole portable apps installer thingie to be finished as I don't really package my own apps, I'm just waiting with much anticipation for the release of other portable apps that have fallen behind for some reason. Inkscape, Infrarecorder, and VLC being among them. I have however started the process of learning to compile them for myself, and may no longer be required to wait for updates to appear, nor possibly begin looking elsewhere for the portable apps which I so wish to use.
Keep up the good work John, and thanks for the dedication to the cause.
The installer is the bit that makes a .paf.exe file that can be run to install a portable app on your drive. Any app. Every app. All the apps.
There is a bug in the current installer which means that if the updater hits problems with the installation task, then it can eat the old version, and also with how the installer handles temp files.
This means that any app released now, would have to be rebuilt and re-release again after the bug is fixed.
They're working on fixing the bug, so that they can get all the apps rebuilt (and that means every single official app out there), so that they can use the fixed installer to build them, and that includes everything in the release queue as updates.
So actually, you are in fact waiting for the installer thingie, since without it, none of your apps would install at all.
As far as I'm concerned the apps could be distributed in 7z, or zip files, as I don't use the menu at all. They shouldn't need to be rebuilt as much as repackaged into the installer format later on. And as I said I'm trying to learn how to compile the nsi scripts myself so I don't have to wait on releases if I don't want to.
Semantics, but yes, the term should have been "repackaged". However, the Installer does more than just extract compressed files. It is designed to work with the PortableApps format, and to update existing apps without overwriting settings, whether you use the menu or not.
The Installer is, of course, different from the Launcher, although that was also a roadblock (not sure that it's an issue right now). The beauty of the PortableApps Launcher system is that you don't need to do any NSIS coding at all, everything is configured using an ini file. You might want to look into this, it could make your job of manually updating easier.
One thing to bear in mind, if you fork your own apps without using the Launcher and/or Installer, and you later want to start using the official versions from this site, you might have a few issues upgrading.
With both Installer and Launcher, the devs on this site should be able to release updated apps very quickly, which is part of the reason for updating the whole system.
https://portableapps.com/apps/development/portableapps.com_installer
https://portableapps.com/apps/development/portableapps.com_launcher
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
I'll refrain from further comments as we seem to be headed in different directions.