There have been a few requests over the years to have the PortableApps.com Platform scan additional paths for apps. The rationale is usually that users want to keep non-PAF apps separate from PAF apps or apps that are updated automatically by the platform separate from those that are not. I'm planning on implementing this within a future release of the PortableApps.com Platform and wanted to layout the setup and see if there are any comments or suggestions.
Since some people want to keep non-PAF apps separate and some want to keep unofficial apps separate, I think using 3 separate paths would make the most sense. I'll be talking about this as if the user has the platform installed to the root of a drive, but this will work with other relative paths as well.
X:\PortableApps - The PortableApps directory we have now which will be scanned by the platform for PA.c Format apps as well as non-PAF apps. Apps will automatically appear in the PA.c Platform and will be automatically updates.
X:\PortableAppsUnofficial - Apps in PA.c Format that have not yet officially been released from our forums and from publishers who have posted versions we do not yet officially update. Apps in this folder will be found by the platform's menu but will not be checked for updates by the PA.c Updater. Only PAF style appinfo.ini files will be scanned for existence in this folder.
X:\PortableAppsOther - Apps not in PA.c Format that are portable. Apps in this folder will be found by the platform's menu but will not be checked for updates by the PA.c Updater. The platform will only scan for EXE files and will not search for appinfo.ini configurations within this path.
For users who have no wish to separate things out, nothing will change from the way it currently works. It's entirely optional and these other two paths will not exist by default. This is strictly an option for power users.
Any thoughts or suggestions? The one thing I'm considering is the name of the last path. Possible PortableAppsNonPAF instead of PortableAppsOther.