When one of the portable applications asks permission to upgrade itself directly from its own web site (which is not portableapps.com) what is the right way to behave?
Can the mentioned permission be given or is the newer release of the application to be waited for + downloaded from portableapps.com and "reinstalled" over the previous one as suggested on this site?
In other words:
do the two different ways of upgrading lead to the same final result or not?
Thanks
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With PAF -- that is, PortableApps.com Format, no, do not let the app update itself, and disable the check (why this is not done always escapes me). The reason is that even with open source software, PortableApps doesn't alter the app, they just tuck it away in a subfolder and handle it with a launcher. The launcher contains version information, so the app should always be updated with a PortableApps update (or the Updater in version 2 beta 5 of the Platform). This updates the app, and the launcher. If you let it update itself, the launcher will continue to act as though you have the previous version, which could lead to some minor conflicts. Also, the official app installer might make changes to the registry, pointing at the portable version, possibly messing things up with the system.
If the portable app isn't PAF, if it's just "just portable" then the app's own update should sort it.
Portable apps from any site pretty much have to be modular. They have to keep their app files separate from their data files (settings and whatnot) and all of this has to be kept separate and work independently from other programs. So deleting the app and reinstalling it (or installing a new, or even older version) should work perfectly fine.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for the answer.
Actually I also thought that letting a PAF application (with launcher) update itself could make the application some how "less portable", by means of registry editing and similar things.
in two ways
First of all, the "upgrade" downloaded straight from the applications home site can do anything from a seamless in-place update, to a fresh local install of the application that doesn't even touch the portable version, so it may not even achieve what you desired at all.
Secondly, if the file or registry data has changed location between versions, which happens from time to time, then the old launcher will not be able to correctly portablize the new version, and thus you may be leaving data behind, or periodically losing settings.
In short, unless you either know how to portablize an application yourself and can test the results, or you are following a guide written by someone who can do so, then it is never a good idea to let an application update itself, and you should always use the updater in platform 2.0b5 or download the new installer from PortableApps.com
The reason that auto-update checks are not turned off by default is that doing so would involve making changes to the upstream applications.