Recreating a portable app

Hi,

This may be a silly idea - or already done somewhere on the site I haven't seen - but how about making a "Recreating" section on each app's page that contains a link to extensive documentation that explains exactly how to make that particular application portable, possibly with associated scripts for automating the procedure. What I am thinking of is this: Guys like me see that App X is old and outdated on the Portable Apps website and think of updating the particular application. Obviously, I could sit down and do all the work required to make App X portable from scratch, but it would be really, really nifty if the dudes who did the previous release had already documented how they did it. Even more nifty would be if Python (Java, whatever) scripts were made to automate the procedure of making an application portable so that updating to a new release was just a matter of running a script, possibly hacking it a bit to accomodate changes in the new release.

So what I imagine is that each application page (such as https://portableapps.com/apps/games/dosbox_portable) gets an additional section named "Recreating" where the following information is displayed:

---
Recreating
Creator: username of dude(s) who did the last release
Procedure: (link to page listing all documents and scripts needed to recreate)
(Other useful stuff)

The goal here being first and foremost to document how each portable app was created from scratch. I imagine a document that contains something like this:

1. Download App X from http://app.x.com.
2. Install App X.
3. Download this script.
4. Run this script with the parameters X and Y (source and target directories).
5. (XPortable.paf.exe now has been created in directory Y).
6. Install and test the portable application.
---

Furthermore, there could also be a Testing section that describes how to test the release so that everybody could see what to do to test the release.

Just my pennies. Probably not even worth that much, but I used to work as a build master and am therefore used to working with the requirement that EVERY step of EVERY procedure is documented and automated 100 percent. Initially such a procedure probably seems heavy and useless, but over the years, as the number of apps and developers and complications, grow, it earns itself back thousands of times.

If I may, I'd like to point to Python (www.python.org) as a scripting language for use for making scripts that automatically make a portable app from a freshly installed product.

I'd be very willing to help with this process as much as my feeble, forgetful mind allows me to.

P.S. The above is based on the assumption that apps are made portable from their released images, not from the source code.

Sincerely,

Superfrog (go get WinUAE and download the game; it is awesome)