Portable App Development

After running into a problem with legalities when working on Portable Skype, I checked my wishlist of open-source software programs that I wanted to be portable, I found VideoLAN. Now although VideoLAN can run from a USB key without problems, it sadly isn't truly portable as it saves its configuration to:

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\vlc\vlcrc

So in order to prove that I could make a valid portable application, I took on the challenge of making Portable VideoLAN. This included finding a way to not only have the configuration save to a seperate location, but also wrap it up into a nice easy Portable Apps solution. Here is the aftermath:

WARNING: Portable Skype will no longer be supported or hosted. You'll have to follow some instructions in the comments to reproduce it. In the mean time though, you can download an archived version of it here.

I always wanted to try my hand out with NSIS scripting and when John released Portable Miranda, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to jump into it with a Portable Skype.

I tried to just copy & paste all the files to my USB drive, but that didn't work. I though I had read that there would be a tutorial released on how to create a portable app? This is a legal version of Photoshop, and the way I interpret the user agreement is that I can only install in one place, so if I install to my USB drive, I don't violate anything.

-pyoung09259

Considering that most of the Portable Apps application suites use NSIS to compile the portable application wrapper, would it make sense to make HM NIS Edit portable...

Rob Loach [Website] [Projects]

I made a nice little .vbs script that can do the following:

- Set an environmental variable to the drive letter of your portable drive, so you can use programs/shortcuts that need an absolute path by changing the drive letter to %portabledrive%:

- Creates a shortcut in the computer's My Documents folder to a directory on your portable drive, so you can just click on it as a folder in most open/save dialogue boxes. It removes it when you remove the drive.

- Starts PStart (or whatever you change it to)

- Can start a program before/after/at the same time as running pstart.

- Safely dismounts the drive (if you are an administrator on the computer) when you close the menu program.

UPDATE 4/17/2006: This has been released:
https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/chat/portable_miranda

I've posted a test release of Portable Miranda. Miranda is actually quite portable as it is. (it saves its profiles to its exe directory by default, which is nice) My version really only has a couple differences:

1. Total install size is dropped from 2.70MB to 1.14MB
2. The profiles directory is split out by default and the launcher allows you the same flexibility in placement as with Portable Firefox, Portable Gaim, etc... so you can have your settings in a seperate 'settings' directory by default... or you can drop Portable Miranda into the same directory structure of the Portable Apps Suite -- a PortableApps directory with an Apps and Data directory within -- and have it work there as well (with the miranda EXE in Apps and the profiles within Data).

Hi,

I searched all over but I could not find the sources. I am looking for source code to do some changes to the applications. If you could post in a FTP/CVS and email me the link it would be great help.

Thanks,
Portable App user.

The guide has temporarily been removed. At some point the original posting was corrupted and I am working on restoring the missing portions of text. New additions will also be made...

Regards,
Andrew

Hi John,

I noticed that you have a seperate SourceForge project made up for every portable application you've put together. Wouldn't it be easier to combine them all into one SourceForge project? Since almost all of them use the same NSIS scripting system, why not combine them all into one project.

You could also then make use of the CVS features for all the projects at once. This would make multi-developer use much easier not only for you, but for us as well. You could even include NSIS in the CVS along with a batch file to do a build of the projects.

Anyway, just thought I'd have my thoughts said. In my opinion it would be much easier to manage and administer.

This will be of interest to those running the Portable Apps Suite or anyone using a PortableApps directory off the root of their portable drive. Drop the two files in this zip (autorun.exe and autorun.inf) into the root directory and Windows will ask if you'd like to open PortableApps when you plug the drive in. When you say yes, you'll get an explorer window opened right up to the directory with your launchers.

https://portableapps.com/downloads/portableapps_autorun_0.0.1.zip