The [Launch] section provides details regarding the launching of the application and surrounding details. It’s also the “general” section for things which aren’t big enough to warrant their own section.
Specify the application name (non-portable version) here, for displaying in the “already running” error box. If this is not specified, the value will be obtained from the Name field in appinfo.ini, minus Portable or , Portable Edition. Please consider using the standard portable application naming scheme (“AppName Portable”) instead of specifying this value.
Example: for the program “App Name”, this value would be App Name (though it should be unset and Name in AppInfo.ini should be set to App Name Portable or App Name, Portable Edition.)
Specify the program to be launched by the PortableApps.com Launcher here, relative to the App directory of the portable application.
There is a special case for Java applications; after specifying [Activate]:Java=require they can specify a value of java.exe or javaw.exe and it will be interpreted into the path to that executable in the Java Runtime Environment.
Example: inside the portable application package, the executable to run is at App\AppName\AppName.exe, so, after removing the App\, ProgramExecutable=AppName\AppName.exe.
This is the lookup order for the various alternative forms of ProgramExecutable. At each level if the condition is not met or the value is not set, it goes on to the next.
Specify the program to be launched by the PortableApps.com Launcher when command-line arguments are given here, relative to the App directory of the portable application. This has the effect of overriding ProgramExecutable when specified if command-line arguments are given. If none are given, the value in ProgramExecutable will be used.
All rules about Java for [Launch]:ProgramExecutable hold with this value.
This can be used for apps which launch a menu but the menu can be bypassed if parameters are passed. One example of this is the NSIS menu - when the program is launched, it is desirable for the menu, NSIS.exe, to be shown, but if a file is given to it in its command line, the NSIS compiler, makensisw.exe, should be launched, as the menu does not recognise file names given to it.
New in version 2.1.
An override for [Launch]:ProgramExecutable when the portable app is running on a 64-bit operating system. Typically a portable app should not include a 64-bit version whether provided by the publisher or not, but if there are significant benefits in having a 64-bit version, or it is required for functionality (e.g. defragmentation or system information analysis), it may be included.
All the rules of [Launch]:ProgramExecutable hold for this.
New in version 2.1.
An override for [Launch]:ProgramExecutableWhenParameters when the portable app is running on a 64-bit operating system. Typically a portable app should not include a 64-bit version whether provided by the publisher or not, but if there are significant benefits in having a 64-bit version, or it is required for functionality (e.g. defragmentation or system information analysis), it may be included.
All the rules of [Launch]:ProgramExecutableWhenParameters hold for this.
If you need to pass any command line arguments to ProgramExecutable to make it run or make it portable, specify them here. Remember that if your program is running from a path with spaces, you may need to put double quotation marks around the value, e.g. -d "%PAL:DataDir%\settings". If you do so, you should put single or double quotation marks around the whole string, like this: CommandLineArguments='-d "%PAL:DataDir%\settings"'.
Concerning the significance of quoting strings and how it will be interpreted, refer to INI keys.
For Java applications, you will almost always need to specify parameters here. See Making Java applications portable for more information.
Example: the application being made portable accepts a --data-directory= command line argument to make it portable, but it does not require the string to be quoted: CommandLineArguments=--data-directory=%PAL:DataDir%\settings
If the application must be run from a certain working directory, either to store its settings there or so that it can find certain files critical to it, set it here. If the reason is so that it can find files, you may be able to circumvent this by placing the application’s directory in the PATH. See [Environment] for details on that technique.
If possible, avoid using this as it will make relative files passed through the command line fail unless it is only a single file given (which will be automatically corrected).
Example: %PAL:AppDir%\AppName
New in version 2.1.
If the application requires a certain operating system to run, specify the version here. The values provided above are in order of how they will be considered, so if for example you use the value Vista, it will tell the user that it won’t run on their operating system when they run it on Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.
There is no special value for Wine in Linux or Mac OS X; if it works, it works, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.
New in version 2.1.
If the application does not run above a certain version of Windows, specify that version here. Be cautious in doing this as often support will be improved in a later version of an application. The values provided above are in order of how they will be considered, so if for example you use the value Vista, it will tell the user that it won’t run on their operating system when they run it on Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
There is no special value for Wine in Linux or Mac OS X; if it works, it works, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.
Changed in version 2.1: added the compile-force value
Setting this to force or try causes the user to be prompted to run the program as an administrator (or a UAC prompt on Windows Vista or Windows 7 when UAC is turned on). If the user cannot elevate to admin or cancels the operation or an error occurs, what happens next depends on the setting here.
If the value is force then the portable application will quit, telling the user that it requires administrative privileges. General reasons for requiring administrative privileges are:
If the value is try then the user will be warned that some features of the portable application will not work. The application would like administrative privileges but they are not essential to the running of the application. General reasons for requesting (but not requiring) administrative privileges are:
It is worthwhile noting that just because an application stores its settings in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE does not mean that you must force running as administrator; it will often be valid to try instead, with the result that portable settings will not be loaded and no settings will be saved. In such a situation the recommended path of action is to contact the author of the original program and request that they modify their application to store its settings in HKEY_CURRENT_USER instead, which is probably where the settings should be.
A special value, compile-force, is available for cases when force doesn’t work properly (there seem to be some cases with environment variables not working properly). Use it only if force doesn’t work, as it sets a flag in the executable so that the operating system handles running as admin rather than the launcher, so no friendly message is given to the user. Internally, this is the NSIS line RequestExecutionLevel admin. After setting this value you will need to regenerate the launcher. Also note that due to the way it works, the value compile-force is incompatible with the operating system-specific overrides below.
You can override this value for specific operating systems with one or more of the values below. Sometimes an application may require administrative privileges on Vista and onwards but not on 2000, XP and 2003 (that is the usual division). In such a situation, you should probably set this to force and use values for 2000, XP and 2003, none, for future compatibility. On Linux or Mac with Wine, the user will always be reported as running as the administrator, and so you don’t need a special case for it.
New in version 2.1.
If the application needs or can benefit from administrative privileges on Windows 2000, you can use this value to override [Launch]:RunAsAdmin.
New in version 2.1.
If the application needs or can benefit from administrative privileges on Windows XP, you can use this value to override [Launch]:RunAsAdmin.
New in version 2.1.
If the application needs or can benefit from administrative privileges on Windows Server 2003, you can use this value to override [Launch]:RunAsAdmin.
New in version 2.1.
If the application needs or can benefit from administrative privileges on Windows Vista, you can use this value to override [Launch]:RunAsAdmin.
New in version 2.1.
If the application needs or can benefit from administrative privileges on Windows Server 2008, you can use this value to override [Launch]:RunAsAdmin.
New in version 2.1.
If the application needs or can benefit from administrative privileges on Windows 7, you can use this value to override [Launch]:RunAsAdmin.
New in version 2.1.
If the application needs or can benefit from administrative privileges on Windows Server 2008 R2, you can use this value to override [Launch]:RunAsAdmin.
Many applications leave things in the user’s “temporary” directory (called TEMP) and don’t clean them up. When not set (thus when set to true), this value assigns a contained TEMP directory to the application (in the format %TEMP%\AppNamePortableTemp) which is removed after the application is closed, thus not leaving anything behind.
If WaitForProgram is set to false, this will still work, placing TEMP in Data\temp, but this may slow down some applications and may also clutter up the device while running. In this case the directory will not be deleted upon program completion, but rather the next time the application is started.
If you test the application you are making portable thoroughly and it never leaves anything behind in TEMP, you can set this to false and the contained temporary directory will not be created.
If you only wish one instance of the portable version of the application to be run, set this to true. If it is set to true, if the launcher is started while another copy of the launcher is already running, the second instance will abort silently. If you wish to prevent a local and portable version of the application from running concurrently, look at SingleAppInstance.
If you only wish one instance of the application, portable or local, to be run, omit this value. If it is set to true or omitted, if the launcher is started while a local copy of the application is already running, it will abort with an error message. This value only affects running a portable instance while a local instance is already running; if a second portable instance is launched, this value this value will not affect it. See SinglePortableAppInstance for controlling that case.
If, however, it is permissible for a portable version of the application to run concurrently with a local instance, you can set this to false.
If the application stores settings in a local location like %APPDATA%, or in the registry, then it is not correct to set this to false. You should only set it to false in such a case as when it stores its settings in the executable’s directory or some path specified by an environment variable or command-line argument, and will not interfere with a local instance or vica versa.
If you wish to specify another executable to require to be closed before the portable application is started than the ProgramExecutable entry, enter the file name in here. This is particularly useful with Java applications which use Launch4J. See Launch4J-based applications for details on that.
If an application takes a long time to start you may wish to have the splash screen show for more than 1.5 seconds (1500ms). Specify the number of milliseconds (as an integer) here to change from it the default 1500.
Use this value with extreme caution. No-one likes a splash screen staying on top of their screen for a minute and a half, stopping them from seeing what they were doing underneath.
With full-screen, resolution-changing applications, running the application while the splash screen is active can confuse the program. If you observe this behaviour in your application, set this to true. (Otherwise avoid it as it may slow down program start-up.)
If you don’t need the launcher to wait for the conclusion of the application, set this to false. Note that you should only do this if you do not have registry entries to handle or files to move, for example if you can redirect all settings with command-line arguments or environment variables.
This option is ignored when running locally.
If the application is single-instance (i.e. if you run another copy of it it won’t run but will activate the first one), and the application can’t restart itself, you can set this to false. If the application can restart itself at all, e.g. Firefox can, DO NOT set this to false, or else clean-up will start while the application is still running, which won’t be good for it.
If the program that you run is a launcher program which launches another executable, and you need to wait for that as well as (or instead of) the original program, specify its file name here, as WaitForEXE1=whatever.exe. If you need more than one, use WaitForEXE2, WaitForEXE3, etc.
If the application does any registering of file type extensions which you handle or clean up, to make the new icon appear or to stop the portable one appearing, set this to one of the values. If it is just cleaning up at the end, after should be enough, but if you handle it with a RegistryKeys value, you will need both.
If the application produces a command line window which you wish to hide (common in some open source games), you can set this to true to hide it.
New in version 2.1.
All portable apps should be designed to cope with changing drive letters (e.g. moving from X:\PortableApps\AppNamePortable to Y:\PortableApps\AppNamePortable), but with some portable apps it’s not practical to support moving the directory the package is stored in (e.g. moving from C:\Users\User\Desktop\AppNamePortable to X:\PortableApps\AppNamePortable).
If you have developed the package well, directory moves will either not matter or be compensated for with [FileWriteN] sections using things like the %PAL:LastPackagePartialDir% and %PAL:PackagePartialDir% environment variables.
When many people make portable apps, they don’t consider what will happen when a user moves the directory, and so it may or may not work. Also historically it was not considered important at all and so no effort was normally put into making it work - it was unsupported behaviour. This is why the default is warn.
If the application will not function if you try to run it in a directory with spaces in the path, you can set this to true to provide a useful error message to the user in this situation.
New in version 2.2.
Sets if the launcher supports being run from an UNC path (i.e. in the form \\server\share\etc).
Before this can validly be set to yes, you should test your portable app and make sure that it really does support UNC paths correctly. Some apps (or their portability wrapper) may corrupt data when not specially designed to cope with UNC paths, because of which the default is warn. When thus set to warn or omitted, the user will be notified that it may not work correctly and given a chance to exit.
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