Portable App Development

Hey community,

I've been able to get Wings3D (an amazing 3D modelling package found at http://www.wings3d.com/) to fully run on my USB drive with no connection to the underlying OS, EXCEPT for a single .ini file that contains 2 absolute paths to folders in the application (all the way from the drive root).

Obviously, by simply editing the .ini the app will run, but each time it is ran, the .ini file has to somehow be edited to be pointed to the correct directory.

This is my first attempt at creating a portable app, can the portable app template handle this kind of replacement in an .ini file?

PUSS 1.02 has now been released. There have been a couple of minor improvements such as the inclusion of a horizontal scrollbar and the re-selection of the previous item in Secure. Also you will notice that the default categories are back in. Finally I have moved to app to a standard foldername so that you should find that with the next release you can extract it over the top without any issues. Please see the project page for more information and a download link.

The Liberta Team

I used to use this batch to quickly run a script and eject.

FOR %%i in (".") do set usbdrv=%%~di

copy deveject.exe "%userprofile%\desktop"
copy startx.exe "%userprofile%\desktop"

echo deveject -EjectDrive:%usbdrv% >> "%userprofile%\desktop\bye.bat"
echo del startx.exe >> "%userprofile%\desktop\bye.bat"
echo del deveject.exe >> "%userprofile%\desktop\bye.bat"
echo del bye.bat >> "%userprofile%\desktop\bye.bat"

cd /D "%userprofile%\desktop"
startx /B bye.bat

Then I got a Lexar JumpDrive Secure, which appears to Windows as a Local Drive rather than a Removable Device. It has the advantage of using an autorun.inf like CDs so my apps start as soon as I insert the stick (SP2 adds a nag popup, but that's the only hold-up).

Someone made portable versions of ethereal, ngrep, nmap, showtraf, snort, tcpdump, and nemesis by recompiling with a portable packet lib...

Repeat: His didn't need WinPCap installed.

His email is: BOBAH.XPEHOB@GMAIL.COM
http://www.packetstuff.com/index.htm
(His site's dead but google has a cache of the main page)

His Google Newsgroup is still up though.
http://groups.google.com/group/PacketStuff?hl=en

The library's site is here
And it can be downloaded here

Hi there,

I'm keen to get the Processing API working for portable drives. I have had some input from the Processing forum about how to do this. And if I get it to work, will look into using NISI to wrap up the app and the changes.

processing.org forum post

Any advice on making this robust is more than welcome. I use Processing to teach aspects of programming, and a portable version for students to carry around would be ideal.

Ben

Hi,

The current way that Firefox Portable and Thunderbird Portable work triggers the UAC and failed installation warnings in Windows Vista.
Given that half the point of having portable apps is so that they can be used on machines that the user doesn't control it's not sufficient to blame Vista and say that UAB should eb turned off.

My understanding is that the current portable apps actually work by installing themselves one start up and then uninstalling themselves on shutdown.

Do you have plans for moving to an alternative way of packaging these apps that will work without requiring any elevated privileges?

I have created a new portable version of Wink, a 'Tutorial and Presentation' creation software. Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users.

Features:

• Directory structure is compatible to portableapps.com
• uses installed settings
• fancy splash-screen

The selfextracting archive can be downloaded from its current location.

could you do something so when you exit vlc and open it up again the settings are not lost?

Hello, everyone

I have been reading and reading in the forums now, for a little while...

I've already downloaded NSIS, UPX and the application template 1.2
This site has already been a goodie bag for me, as there are a plethora of tricks and hints to be found - thank you to everyone, so far.

What else will I need ? Is there a "merged" tutorial somwhere, and I've just missed it ?

Mostly, I'd like to be able to re-pack smaller Client/Server applications for running off a USB key, without leaving traces on the PC that was used.
A current goal for me (nah, I won't just request it, I'll start working on it), would be to run a 2X Client (alternative MS terminal server client, http://www.2x.com) off a USB key. So that's where I'll start.

Ok... so I have a new package put together, but the standard 7-Zip icon is really annoying... Anyone know how to change the archive icon? If you do it with a resource explorer/editor it comes back with an error upon execution.