Hello, instead of running portable apps from a removable drive, I am using them from the local disk. When I tried to copy over to another computer, I ran into problems. Specifically, Thunderbird portable didn't work as expected, most of the mail folders showed without any content in them. I am wondering whether it is required that a portable app be always stored in the same physical device.
Thank you
You are here
is it possible to create working copies of a portable app?
March 6, 2012 - 2:04pm
#1
is it possible to create working copies of a portable app?
Please Help Support Us
Please help support us by making a donation so we can keep bringing you awesome free software. We accept credit card, wire transfer, PayPal, cryptocurrency, and more.
If you recently donated, thank you!
Visit the Community page
Join our forums
Subscribe to our email newsletter
Subscribe with RSS
Follow us on BlueSky
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on LinkedIn
Follow us on Mastodon
Follow us on Twitter
Some apps (thunderbird is one of them) store absolute paths in theis configuration files. So if you copy it from one path to the other, it will mess up things. If you copy/move it in a way that only the drive letter changes, it will work.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Thanks, that helped, indeed with identical paths (except for the drive letter) it now displays the folders correctly. However, all the tags are missing in the copied version.
With the newer versions of Portable ThunderBird, "portability" in the sense of migrating the application to another drive, stopped working.
Is this feature going to be supported again in the future?
It's important for me to be able to use portable Thunderbird from distinct drives, it is a pity that certain paths are hardcoded.
thank you
when you install it on a drive, like an usb stick, it will work on any computer, it can be moved to other computer without problems.
If you copy the folder and paste it to other similar drive and keep the path the same, it will again work no problem.
So what you are asking for is supported and works well.
What might sometimes not work are some extensions as they may not behave properly after a migration, one needs to 'reinstall' them that is all.
Note that certain path locations as 'program files' under windows will not work, but this is restriction of windows.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
I have changed the drive letter of the new drive to match the old one and it does work! I suppose the paths must be identical all the way up to the root, including the drive letter
thanks
The launcher adjust paths in the prefs.js and the extensions database so you can move it between paths. Note that certain extensions may mess this up by storing stuff in non-standard locations.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!