I have a quick question for the devs regarding environment variables. Is it in bad form to have %APPDATA% redirect to somewhere to eliminate the need for file and directory moves? I only ask because it seems easier to redefine environment variables like APPDATA, LOCALAPPDATA, and USERPROFILE and not have to worry about moving large amounts of files.
New: Supermium (Apr 11, 2024), Platform 29.4 (Apr 10, 2024)
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It depends. APPDATA redirects don't always work for one. And the environment is passed from one process to another.
So, we have a game that we use an APPDATA redirect on, but it calls nothing externally at all. But, if that same game had a link to their website in the About window, it could spawn a local browser thinking APPDATA was on your flash drive instead of the local PC and create a ton of files. Or possibly not even launch. So, it gets messy very quickly.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I never really thought about it that way. I ask because there are a couple of programs I want to try to make portable that store a LOT of data in APPDATA and have no command line switches to move it elsewhere.
you have to learn NSIS and write your own launcher, but i use Junctions.nsh.
I only use it for extreme cases, where the size of the folder is detrimental to the speed of the app.