Portable App Development

I'd like to submit the following to be added to the Forum Guidelines of the Request Apps thread:

To make life easier for us developers, please follow these guidelines:

I recently submitted an application for a SF.net project (PortableNotepad2, or pnotepad2); it's been in the queue for 4 business days and I was wondering how long a wait it would be (they say it's usually two days). Does anybody know?

Hello,

UPX 2.0 has been released, maybe you should check if the compression ratio is higher now and maybe more files can be comressed:

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/UPX_Ultimate_Packer_for_eXecutables...

I am looking forward for the Portable Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 release, Miranda and ClamWin AV are working really good.

Keep up the good work,
René

Hi,
is there smoewhere a simple example of a source for programlauncher. I looked at e.g. PortableOpenoffice and I'm quite confused.

As I haven't done anything really complicated with NSIS yet, I need something really simple.

Or at least a very good commented source: What is done and why?

A starting point would be what to do when a application writes to e.g. the profile directory. How to avoid that assuming that the software has no commandline option for that.

Reason: I have several applications here (mainly commercial) that I want to make portable (for my own use). Of course I then would share my results.

This program is the Portable version of the WinHTTrack Website Copying program. I use this all the time, so thought I would create it portably for those using dial-up and could use a good download and read-offline website copier.

It is the first program based on the QuickPort NSIS Template. Read the code to see how easy it was to createusing the template.

Version Information
- Launcher: 1.0.0.0
- WinHTTrack: 3.40-2

More Information with Download Link

The Quickport NSIS template is a template to allow the quick portability of a program. By making a few changes and installing NSIS and the included plugins, you can create a portable program out of any program that uses 1 registry key. This script is based on nm35's Portable Notepad2 code and comes complete with the
necessary plugins and program tools (Text Editor and NSIS Compiler).

NEW: Version 1.2 Fixes a bug where the Registry plugin would not close. And fixed the name of the icon file that is used.

More Information with Download Link

After doing some brainstorming on portable applications and adapting existing applications so that they'd be portable, I thought it would be pretty neat to have a program where you could easily make applications portable just by writing a script file, without having to compile it. All the script would do is tell the system where the application stores its data and the system would take care of the rest.

Example
For example, let's say you want to use ProgramX on your USB drive, but it stores all its data in the registry. You could make a simple script file that would tell the system where ProgramX stores its data and then the system would take care of the rest. Since this script is read in when you want to run the application, there is no need to compile it or deal with external compilers like NSIS.

Hey all!

As I can see it there are four launchers in various stages of production at the moment which all have there own strengths.

Libertà - Many modules (Backup, Restore, Log, Sync, Auto Update, Reg Wrapping...)
Johns Menu - Compact on screen size, ease of use
Rene's App - One seriously nice (skin-able) look!
START - Small and compact size, easy to use

All of these features are SERIOUSLY impressive. Therefore I propose this…

We gather them all together in one new app.

- Its main screen is Rene's app
- It has the modules I have written
- When it is minimised the right click menu is Johns App

I've been debating directory layouts a bit and wanted some thoughts from other developers. Basically, I'm thinking internally to the apps themselves... which will also make things easier when used with the Suite and with the upcoming launcher.

My thought is this:

PortableAppName
 - App
   - appdirectory1
   - appdirectory2
 - Data
   - settingsdirectory1
   - settingsdirectory2
 - Extras
   - backup settings files, etc (coming soon)

So, for example, Portable Firefox would be:

PortableFirefox
 - App
   - firefox
   - plugins
   - PortableFirefoxCode
 - Data

I was playing around with Mono (an open-source .NET implementation) and decided to try it out as a portable application development suite. I installed it on my computer, copied the files to my USB drive, and tried to hook it up with PSPad (which is already portable). I can now compile C# code from PSPad without any dependancies on .NET being installed.

Compiler Settings
Here are the compiler settings for PSPad I used...
Compiler: drive:pathto\Mono\bin\mcs.bat
Parameters: "%FILE%"