Hi there! I have installed portable apps on my cloud drive (OneDrive) and want to be able to run a subset of the programs at startup on multiple machines - for example, my home system, my workstation at the office, and my laptop.
If I have certain programs that I want to run permanently (for example, lightscreen, autohotkey, dm2, ditto, etc.), then they conflict with each other's startup information, and I start getting the "Another instance of x is already running. Please close other instances of x before launching x." message.
The problem is, that program is running on a completely different machine, and I want it to keep running there, as well as on the 2nd and 3rd and nth machine I have portableapps on. For me, that's the whole benefit of running on a cloud drive.
Any ideas?
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When attempting to use the apps in that fashion, you're trying to make two different running copies of the same app compete for the same set of data/settings. This isn't what portable apps are designed for. They are designed to be run one place at a time, closed, then run somewhere else.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
But since we now support storage on cloud drives, isn't this a natural extension or an area for the platform to grow in to?
Cloud drives are simultaneously available on multiple machines at the same time, so using them at the same time doesn't seem as far-fetched any more.
Storage isn't the same as having a virtual system. OneDrive, etc allow you to store files not execute programs of your choice.
JTH: is this an FAQ yet?
Wm
You simply can't do that because you would be attempting to run exactly the same application in multiple locations, passing user settings backward and forwards between the stored application and the independent systems in use at the same time. Not even fully network aware software can do that when it's fully installed, unless all user files are stored and accessed from different user file locations.
Think it through more thoroughly and liken what you are suggesting to how a normal computer network operates, with essential file locking in place to prevent individual users from editing files already in use by another user, It's would be a recipe for irreconcilable file conflicts when user data files are moved between the base application and the users' PC, edited differently on those 'remote' PCs, and then copied back to the same base application in a different sequence as the remote applications are shut down.