First off, I really love portable apps and all the development that has been going on towards portablizing apps...it's been a long time coming.
AFter using it a while I was thinking that it might be advantageous to separate the settings from the apps.
So something like...
\PortableApps\FireFox
\PortableApps\FileZilla
\Settings\FireFox
\Settings\FileZilla
While this might seem like more to manage now that each app has TWO folders, I think it would help for the following reasons:
1. Settings can be located on a Truecrypt drive, whereas apps can be located in the clear. I always cringe at the thought of my FileZilla.xml file falling into the wrong hands.
2. Apps can be reinstalled, removed, updated without affecting the settings.
3. Backing up only the settings is a breeze.
4. I can make a "de-personalized" copy of my USB drive simply by copying only the Apps directory to another USB drive....and my buddy wont get all of my settings.
Has anybody considered doing this???
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2. Apps can already be reinstalled and updated without affecting settings. Every single app on PortableApps.com supports in-place upgrades. You can install it over an existing copy without incident. You can also ditch the App directory to remove the whole app without removing your data.
3. Backing up only settings is a breeze. Just click the Backup button in the PortableApps.com Menu and select App Data. It will backup the data for all of your apps in just a couple clicks.
4. The ability to de-personalize and copy your apps is coming in a later release.
The only thing you can't do is split the app data onto a TrueCrypt volume. This would require the split you mentioned, but would add quite a bit of complexity and effort to every single app. Combine this with the fact that most people won't be able to use it (TrueCrypt requires admin logins, so you can't use it at net cafes, school computers, office computers, libraries, etc) and it simply isn't worth the effort. Besides, the apps are useless without the data, so you may as well just install the whole thing onto a TrueCrypt volume if you're so inclined. You don't lose anything by doing so (since you can't use the apps without the settings anyway).
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Understood....thanks for the reply John.
What started all this is that I have now built about 5 USB drives for myself, friends, family with a combination of PA, my own "Portablized" utilities, along with a custom autorun amd scripts I wrote that Add "Mount/UnMount TrueCrypt" and "Launch PA Menu" to the shell right-click.
I "stage" this installation on a network drive "S:\USBDrive" where I can modify it, test it and get it working just right. Then I have a "DeployUSB.bat" which runs a robocopy out to the USB drive. I can quickly update a USB drive to this new "image" pretty quickly as robocopy performs a mirror type copy.
Problem is, if I already have settings in the various apps, they'll get blown out unless I do some file date checking etc. Just thought it would make this process smoother if I could just exclude "\Settings" from the whole process. There are other ways I can get around this though I suppose.
Thanks again for the reply...I can definitely see your points.
Just place an exclude on "\PortableApps\*\Data" and all the apps will be properly sanitized when copied over. With any good copy utility, it's just as easy as excluding a single directory. All the PortableApps.com releases keep all their data with the the AppName\Data directory. It's designed that way on purpose.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Yeah, that's what I'll do...thanks for the help.
Hey one more thing. (while I have you on the line)
For normal apps (non-PA apps) I notice I can drop any folder underneath "PortableApps" and its EXE will be recognized by the Menu. However, if there is more than one EXE, those EXE's will also be populated into the menu.
What is the best way to eliminate the other EXE's?
Maybe search for the PAM Mod R30 or the question you just asked as it's been answered NUMEROUS times.
______________________
Signature...What Signature?
John, but even me can answer that... make a launcher for the only exe you want to show on PAM, then store it like this...
PApps\AppName+Portable(here is the launcher)\regularNonPAppName
I use it with my mIRC and CCleaner...
How to make a launcher? search... there are many topics about that...
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