Portable App Development

Hey everyone.

I have recently done an online installer like the one in the google chrome installer andd have got the [downloadfiles] section fairly well knocked out, however it downlads the setup file, and leaves it at that. I need it to install to the thumbdrive. The following is my installer.ini file:

[DownloadFiles]
DownloadURL=http://www.mapwindow.org/download.php?file_name=http://svn.mapwindow.org...
DownloadName=MapWindow 4.8 RC1 Installation Files

Hi @ all
I don't know if that's the right forum. But I just want present a portable software, which you can include in the application-list:

-------------
Program name: VocMinder
Description: VocMinder provides a complete, flexible system to train, manage and exchange vocables, sentence and grammar topics of foreign languages.
Version: 1.1
Author: Simon Wehrli, Stefan Wehrli
Type: Open Source (GPL); portable
Category: Education

Application: Database Browser
Category: Development
License: Freeware
Description:
This easy to use tool allows user to connect to any database and browse or modify data, execute sql scripts, export and print data
Download Database Browser Portable 3.2.2.9 [2.55MB download / 2.62MB installed]
(MD5: 851c0452901230144f077696b5dc2073)

Hello there,

I have modified the source for the VLCPortable launcher so that it does not have to rebuild the font cache upon every launch. I was wondering how I go about submitting it so that others can utilize the modified version of the launcher. Any help in this regard would be most appreciated.

I want to learn how to make portable apps for personal use and I thought I would start with Autoruns. This app only needs to set these registry entries...

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

; autoruns
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\AutoRuns]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001
"onlinesearchcommand"="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="
"shownomicrosoft"=dword:00000001

I read Creating A Portable App: A Guerilla Field Guide but I don't understand this section:

Become familiar with the launchers available. For instance:

I am working on Snarl, it has quite a few registry entries that are essential for the program. Not quite sure how I can copy them and get them to load with the launch with the app/ I HAVE read the launcher manual but still a bit confused. Do I have to do a registry write for each entry?

Here is a paste of the keys I believe need to be written.
http://tinypaste.com/9249a
Any help appreciated, or maybe this is too complex to go portable? If so I would appreciate knowing that as well.

OK Looking at Snarl as a portable app. It is written in VB6. Problem I have is that it stores files in APPDATA upon install. I copied them out and tried using PA Launcher to move the files back and forth. It only moves a few of files ( Using directories move). Now If I manually copy files all is good, but if I let the launcher do it it does not load all the files and then creates a default directory without all bells and whistles? Any ideas? BTW I am in contact with author who may be making a command line switch in a future build so the locations of hte files can be switched.

I packaged up SQLyog using the PA launcher and installer packages. It works fine, uses the config directory within the package thanks to the -dir command line option, everything seems exactly the way it should... except for the complete lack of action if I try to launch it from the PA menu. The menu vanishes like it does for any other app, but SQLyog will not run. I can't find any kind of error logging. The icon looks good, everything else seems fine, the only steps I skipped are documentation and a splash screen.

Any ideas?

Hello there. I have an issue with VLCPortable wanting to rebuild the font cache every time it's launched. This to me is undesirable behavior, and to be avoided. The new VLC 1.1.0 is creating a file xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-i386.cache-2 in $Appdata/vlc. The x's there appear to be a random string generated some how from what it was able to build. I think I've found where to copy this file in VLCPortable.nsi but need to figure out how to express wildcards for the file as the actual file name is unknown.

Has any tried to create a portable launcher for Google SketchUp?

I've looked through the forums and seen some old discussions about it, but it looks like it was abandoned because it wasn't open source. I figured that now that we have some freeware programs and the installer is able to download installers and extract them that it would be worth another look.

If no one has tried it, I might give it a stab. I've not played the the download capabilities of the installer yet.