I've loved portableapps.com and used it for many years. I've recently been introduced to scoop.sh and have been loving that as well.
Honestly, especially after installing the ASuite program launcher, I've been preferring scoop, but I'm still inexperienced with it.
Are there any other scoop users here? If you find an app that is on both platforms, which do you choose? What are your insights to how the two platforms compare to each other, and how do you balance them?
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Scoop is similar to other command line installers and isn't geared towards portable software. Less than 1% of their official listings claim to be portable. The unofficial ones that are portable include a mix of stuff including of zips and other bits. Saw some illegal Chinese sites among the sources.
Note that the unofficial listings on Scoop for PortableApps.com are all out of date. Scoop will not properly install them when selected. The files are ripped out of the PA.c Installer using 7-Zip, bypassing any installer logic to handle upgrades and the like, so they won't be supported.
Edit: I think I see the confusion. Scoop claims it "downloads and manages packages in a portable way", but it's just referring to the download of the installers and the extracted files. The apps themselves won't be portable other than the fact that you can move those files to another PC. Your data in the registry, AppData, etc will all be local only and left behind. That's not what a portable app is: https://portableapps.com/about/what_is_a_portable_app
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Thank you for your response.
It's a very good point that scoop is not portable focused. Though it is confusing to me, because the scoop app maintains a "persist" directory for settings of separate installations to be stored, and I've even seen it move the data out of my local appdata folder when it detects a previous non-scoop installation. However, some apps, such as gimp, offer persistent settings, yet do not seem to generate any data in the persist directory.
Maybe it's most fair to say that scoop.sh is portable, except when it isn't? Despite the bucket repositories, perhaps it lacks quality control on a per-app basis.
Thanks for your input on the subject.