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Portable App Development

Discuss portable app development and modification of existing apps.

Move .skn files from settings folder and back

Submitted by Devo on April 10, 2008 - 1:15pm

I am writing a launcher and have a question about moving files. I need to be a able to move files from the settings directory to the app directory in order for the program to work. I've been looking at the SumatraPDF source to be able to do that. The problem is that the files that need to be moved could have any file name. The extension on the file name will always be the same.

Example: I need to move all files with the extension .skn from the settings folder to the app folder when the program is launched and back to the settings folder when the program is closed.

Grasping at straws here...

Submitted by Bruce Pascoe on April 10, 2008 - 12:11pm

Okay, well since there are no official PAF specs and the unofficial ones carry "don't use this" status, I figure I'll ask a different way: what do I have to do to my app if I wanted to release it on PA.com now?

I mean, if there's no specs and we're not supposed to use the unofficial ones, how is anyone supposed to release anything?

Can NSIS stop/start an aplication? // Past Systray icons

Submitted by BrianAll on April 9, 2008 - 5:00pm

Okay, I found this out a while ago.
When a portable application such as Pidgin or Miranda runs, windows will store the settings for the behavior of the system tray icon [Always Show, Always Hide, Hide when Inactive] in the registry. However, when the program closes, these settings are kept and will be displayed under "Past Items" in the customize notifications part of the Taskbar & Start Menu Properties. This exposes all the applications which use system tray icons, that have previously been running on the computer. Shock *gasps*

NSIS Help please.

Submitted by Jacob Mastel on April 8, 2008 - 3:18pm

I'm working on making a launcher for a app called Skinner. But I keep getting this annoying message. My Code is:

Outfile ..\..\SkinnerPortable.exe
Name "Skinner Portable"
Icon "..\..\App\AppInfo\appicon2.ico"
SilentInstall Silent
AutoCloseWindow True
RequestExecutionLevel user

!include "FileFunc.nsh"
!include "ReplaceInFile.nsh"
!include "Registry.nsh"
!insertmacro GetRoot

Var APPDIR
Var SETDIR

Section Main
	
		System::Call 'kernel32::CreateMutexA(i 0, i 0, t "SkinnerPortable"2) i .r1 ?e'
			Pop $0
			StrCmp $0 0 DefineVariables TheEnd
		
		DefineVariables:

gdiplus.dll - should it go in CommonFiles?

Chris Morgan's picture
Submitted by Chris Morgan on April 8, 2008 - 3:00am

Hi all,

I've noticed that quite a few PortableApps include gdiplus.dll (and require it on Win2K and down); OpenOffice.org, Pidgin, Task Coach, Scribus, RegShot, and my own BPBible being the ones I've noticed so far.
Should we be moving that to the CommonFiles directory and setting %path% to include that? The file is about a megabyte, and, well... every megabyte counts.

What do others think?

UPX Question

Submitted by dark_yux on April 7, 2008 - 12:43pm

I'm messing with an emulated Slax on my USB And it's just too big. Can I UPX or compress the ISO's and still have it run through Qemu?

PS: Why not DSL? It's not persistent without partitioning your USB drive, I want to make this as painless as possible.

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