Portable App Development

With the help of radarman36, I'm now doing this. A first dev test release is available here.

As I am considering creating a launcher to make the Steam platform portable I'd like to know some things before:

• Is there some interest in this?
• To the admins: would such an app still fit the site limits and could be hosted here as Steam itself is free but the games are not?

Of course this won't contain any hacks or modification to the app's files.

So I have been thinking about some things including mobility and virus problems.

Now lies the problem of I have plugged my device into a system and the Autorun is automatically removed due to system policy, and it is out of my control.

So now, I got to thinking about ways to prevent this. Some USB devices have a switch to make them read only. This is fine if you have that physical switch and do not need to make changes to any files or copy anything onto the device.

Application: HandBrake
Category: Music & Video?
Description:HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

HandBrake Portable 0.9.4 Development Test 1 English

I took the download down due to problems with .NET (I think its .NET).

some people were complaining that pam can't import normal applications and with a click import it in the menu.
There are people who don't need completely portable, no traces behind, software. They just want to be able to plug and launch their favourite apps.
Other people download apps at other websites which offer portable apps but not In the right format.

I want to write that and I am thinking in the way of generating a .lnk file pointing to the software who is copied in the apps map.
at appinfo.ini, can it handles a .lnk file instead of a exe file?
do you have a better idea?

I was recently looking at the MediaMonkey Portable launcher and noticed that a folder is left at C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\ in Windows7. The folder is removed in XP, so obviously something's changed. The settings and everything are moved properly, but an empty folder is left and not removed. I've posted the cleanup code below, but I don't know what's wrong. Can somebody take a look at this?

EDIT: Topic moved to MediaMonkey Launcher topic.

Look -- I might not know what I'm talking about here -- but I was just looking at the NSIS FAQ, and came across this: File Association

I'm going to assume that most of you NSIS wizards know about all that, it seems a pretty elementary function, doesn't look at all complicated.

So... couldn't certain launchers use that?

I notice that most portable app launchers use a fairly sizeable chunk of memory, relatively speaking. 10 MB seems to be the average.

I'm wondering why this is - and why a Windows API call to say 'EmptyWorkingSet' isn't made upon main program launch?

Thanks for any info,
J

Hello,

I have read many posts regarding the support of 64-bit platforms by Portable Apps, but most of them I think revolve around compatibility of 32-bit applications.
Here we are facing a particular challenge: our portable Java application relies on JNI programs for specific integration with the host (mail, smartcards, etc.) which in turn rely with host specific programs.

When these specific programs are compiled for a 64-bit host, then we have to recompile our JNIs in 64-bit and thus we need A 64-BIT PORTABLE JAVA RUNTIME ENVIRONMENT !!!

Are there any plans for this ?

I'm working on an online installer right now, and for some reason it can't seem to handle folders with dollar signs in the folder name. Here's the installer's file structure:

topocr.exe [installer]
-----topocr.exe [application]
-----$COMMONFILES
----------[a lot of files here]
-----$PLUGINSDIR
----------[a lot more files here]

Here's a sample installer.ini I've tried:

[DownloadFiles]
DownloadURL=http://www.topocr.com/topocr.exe
DownloadName=TopOCR
DownloadFilename=topocrinstaller.exe
DownloadMD5=d2438258b5eb61a6357a27984f84866e

I'm working on an online installer for TopOCR; however, the AdvancedExtract1To parameter seems to be failing. It correctly creates the folder, but doesn't extract the installer's files into that folder.
I know it should be able to, since 7-Zip shows the embedded files without a hitch... anyone know what the problem might be?

Here's my installer.ini: