Portable App Development

Do you think it would be possible to make some sort of a tutorial on how to take an app that is FOSS and make it into a PortableApp? Because I would love to learn how to do that but I have no idea. I'd like to learn how to take the files of the app and sort them into App and Data folders, make the launcher, make the installer, etc. Is there any way that I could somehow learn this?

Could we start implementing re-naming of folders to include file versions? It can be annoying having to open the application if you just want to see if it is up-to-date (like if you can't remember if you downloaded that update or not, etc).

Would be greatly appreciated, and I can't see it being much work...

Okay Tom Revell the original author of stickies has hosted my launcher for stickies. He included the app and said if you wanted to release it on this sight you could link to his sight for a direct download. The launcher lies here.

Okay...
I'm making a launcher for an app that happens to be using 4 different registry keys, and all of them are essential for the program to run. I've been looking at the NSIS script for 7-zip, but it only needs one key. My question is: How do I arrange the script when it is using more than one key? Here is the section I've been working with:

RegistryBackup:
		StrCmp $SECONDARYLAUNCH "true" LaunchAndExit
		;=== Backup the registry
		${registry::KeyExists} "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\7-zip-BackupBy7-ZipPortable" $R0
		StrCmp $R0 "0" RestoreTheKey

I have a request for when CommandPromptPortable is brought up to date. Currently it is impossible to enter additional parameters via ini or command line, only by using commandprompt.bat in Data\batch. This makes it difficult to use CommandPromptPortable from other Portable Apps. For instance with Perl Portable I want to be able to open up a command prompt with a /k parameter to perform a command or custom batch file. As it stands to do this I have to back up any existing commandprompt.bat and create my own temporary one, then swap them back out afterward.

I have downloaded most of these portable apps now and run everything off my USB Drive.

Does anyone have a guide on how to create these portable apps? I am a programmer by trade and am assuming that certain utilities need to be used to track dlls etc and to tell the exe files the proper route to find them.

Any help much appreciated. Great Work so far and well done to everyone involved.

i asked about this in a topic in the localization section but nobody answered. I have the japanese translations now for jkdefrag but i don't know how to add them since no matter what encoding i try to use the characters show up as boxes or question marks. will it still show up fine to japanese windows even if it shows up weird on my pc? and what encoding should i use for the ini?

Alright, I was bored today so I decided to work on a Auslogics BoostSpeed 4 launcher, because it would be a really useful tool to bring with me to use on other computers to clean them up, instead of carrying 5 other apps. Now There are only 4 registry keys made, 2 for the Start menu and 2 for the Current User and User Sections. Since the 2 start menu ones don't matter, its really just 2. I'm going to use Portable App Creator because it has a nice collection of apps that can be used to make it. Plus I'm still working on learning to write in other ways.

Two registry functions. First is a RegKeyExists function that will determine if a reg key exists without using the Registry plugin. The next one builds on that function, and can use SetACL to reset permissions on a key to allow you to delete it, ie the Enum\Root\LEGACY_ keys.

Should be self-explanatory how to use them. They use the same format as the Registry plugin, ie a full key path.

Release Notes:

Update 2008-04-06

Well this little project of mine has grown. The code's pretty long now, so it's available as a download. More macros available -

[See full code at end of post]

${ProcessExists}
Determines if a given process exists by name or PID, and returns the Process ID (PID).

${GetProcessPath}
Determines first if a process exists, and returns the full path by name or PID.
WARNING: This will only succeed if the calling process has sufficient rights to open the target process.