Hello Everyone,
I would like to know the process & instructions on how to build a portable app from scratch and, locally.
I used to use vmware thinapp (process of building app is quite simple and straight forward) to make portable app however i believe portableapps.com is a better to build portable.
I found one post old post https://portableapps.com/node/14868 however i find it difficult to understand the instructions.
Appreciate if someone can guide me on the process of building the portable app in simple language.
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I will suggest you to read about this section of portableapps.com https://portableapps.com/development.
Portabilizing application... 14 at the moment
Thanks for sharing the link. I checked the resources but it's too detailed without any reference. Is there any step by step guide with a good reference to begin with?
Thanks,
Nancy Alpha Victor
Oh yeah I forgot. There is a _how_to.txt in the PortableApps.com_Application_Template_3.5.2.zip for the template of PA.c format and it is explaining what to do first etc.
Portabilizing application... 14 at the moment
Thanks for the guidance. In the documentation, it mentions that
. Put your app in the App\AppName sub-directory and rename the AppName directory as appropriate
Now is it a installation package like msi/exe or just the application.exe file placed under program files?
Thanks,
Nancy Alpha Victor
Have you looked at any of the examples listed in the guidance for using the PortableApps Launcher? They should make it pretty obvious what is needed.
Clue: If what you were to include was a standard Windows exe/msi installer file then all it could do is offer to install the application locally as normal, so what is needed is an 'unpacked' version of the application you're working on. To get to that stage depends on how the application is normally distributed which can vary from a simple 'zip' file containing all the required files through to an application which must be installed locally to get the required files. In every case you need to monitor what is written where, what Windows Registry entries are made when both installing and running the software locally; plus what dependencies (if any) are required by the app, so that you can deal with any portability issues appropriately; and also so that you can completely uninstall and remove all traces of the installation.
Hope that gets you a step further
I had the feeling that articles like this
https://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/create-a-portable-version-of-any-applica...
had to be overly simplistic in their approach and what they promised.
Also, I have found the .PAF format in use here to be quite preferable to some other -- I'm not sure which -- portable-izing tools which yield a solitary .Exe file, but which leave a lot of file-tree detritus ("SKEL" folders & such) behind every time you run the program, which is rather untidy and I end up always wanting to clear it away.
What you said makes a lot of sense. Does this mean that if we have not monitored *everything* with a program like Revo during a *fresh install*, in order to log all of those dependencies and Registry entries, then we will be up the proverbial creek without a paddle ? Or did apps or suites like Thinapp and Cameyo have ways of uncovering those dependencies and Registry entries, after the fact ?