Why aren't more programs portable

[J44xm]

["J44xm"; Wed, 17 Aug 2005 19:38:14 GMT]

I'm working on portable-fying some of my applications. My primary focus is
Pegasus Mail.

I've got a pretty decent solution going:

From pegasus-mail_registry-mod.bat

@echo off
if exist %windir%\system32\reg.exe (set regapp=%windir%\system32\reg.exe)
else (set regapp=reg.exe)
%regapp% export "HKCU\Software\Pegasus Mail" pmail-original.reg
%regapp% delete "HKCU\Software\Pegasus Mail" /f
%regapp% import pmail.reg
start /max /wait \APPLIC~1\_INTER~1\PEGASU~1.30B\winpm-32.exe
%regapp% export "HKCU\Software\Pegasus Mail" pmail.reg
%regapp% delete "HKCU\Software\Pegasus Mail" /f
if exist pmail-original.reg %regapp% import pmail-original.reg
del pmail-original.reg >nul
set regapp=
echo Done.

The great thing is that I can use my portable launcher, TrayBar, to launch
this batch file hidden. The batch file sits, hidden, while I use Pegasus
Mail, and then cleans up once I close the program. That's pretty cool.

 

[Lennart]

Op Tue, 16 Aug 2005 22:34:28 -0500 schreef J44xm:

Why aren't more programs portable? I just bought a huge portable hard drive
and I'm transferring many of my applications there and finding that they
write their settings (or sometimes some other information) to the Registry
and not to the application folder. Is there a reason more software authors
choose to use the Registry instead of an .ini or .dat file or something?
This is pretty frustrating.

My overview of portable sites from keynote
http://www.usbapps.com NOT FOUND @ 15/08/05
http://www.techwriter.de/beispiel/softwar1.htm GERMAN
http://www.xtort.net/office/officesuite.php > Floppy Office. v1.0.0
http://www.portablefreeware.com OF COURSE
http://standalone.atspace.org/index.html RECENTLY DISCOVERED ...


Hope, you can something with this. I've the same problem and last weeks
i've searched internet for portable apps. I think, i've 60% portable - a
least the most important app's.

O, and look also for "portable Thunderbird, portable Firefox and portable
openoffice""

gr, Lennart

 

[Sascha Wostmann]

["Sascha Wostmann"; Wed, 17 Aug 2005 21:01:49 GMT]

Pegasus Mail

Wait, Pegasus Mail is a no-install?

Hmm, now that you ask... Maybe I mixed that up with the possibility to
just copy its data directories to another machine and continue using
it there (what I did for about two years until I retired the other
machine...)


Viele Grüße,
Sascha

 

[DevilsPGD]

In message <[email protected]> J44xm

["DevilsPGD"; Thu, 18 Aug 2005 19:56:47 GMT]

If you say size isn't important, you haven't spent enough time on dialup
recently.

True enough, indeed. Amazing how great dial-up was 10 years ago and how
inadequate it feels today.

Yes indeed. And it's especially scary to me, I left dialup in the
33.6Kb days, so the stable 50Kb connection I had on vacation shouldn't
be as bad a I remember.

Alas, the internet has grown up and let folks online who have never seen
anything but broadband.

Hell, the city where I was staying had a website with fullsize images
that were scaled down in HTML -- So in order to see each little 64x64
"thumbnail" you had to download the entire 600KB image. Worse, they
weren't even links, so your average user wouldn't even know there were
bigger pictures.

I suggest we dump these folks in the ocean.

The management folks, yes. The teenagers can be locked up on in
dungeons sharing dialup lines until they're 20.

 

[David]

I'm working on portable-fying some of my applications. My primary focus is
Pegasus Mail.

I have a two-pronged plan: I keep programs' Registry settings in .reg files
on my portable hard drive and then merge specific .reg files with the
current computer's Registry immediately before I boot specific programs;
then, when I close the program, I export that program's Registry settings
back to a .reg file on my drive and then delete the Registry settings. This
seems feasible to me, though I welcome advice. (Would this approach only
work when I have administrative rights?)

I've been backing up the Registry settings from a batch file (excerpt):

So I'm wondering how I could automate the process. I could start
applications through a batch file that would merge the appropriate Registry
settings and then start the program, but that approach would require that I
manually (through a batch file, of course) export and remove the necessary
Registry keys after I'm done. Does anyone know of any small software that
might help with something like this?

This might be beyond the scope of this group, but since this sort of thing
concerns the freeware community, I hope someone might have some sort of
ideas.

My do you need to use the registry at all. Simply store the items in a
text file, call it .cfg or .ini, in the application directory and have
the program read that file on starting.

 

[Sascha Wostmann]

Chief Suspect:

Sometimes ... not always, I have found that programs which install
with registry entries work JUST FINE if all constituent files are
relocated into the same folder.

For instance, upon installing a popular Stream Ripping program, I
found that a certain .DLL file had been entered in the registry
data and the .DLL placed in the System32 folder.

I isolated the .DLL and placed it with the main executable file
in another folder, then uninstalled the program. Later I
found that the program operated just fine in portable status from
the secondary folder which had the needed .DLL in there with it.

DLLs are usually searched for in the following order:
1) application directory
2) directories in the "path" variable
3) windows system directory

that way it is for example possible to share a visual basic program by
just delivering the "vbrun300.dll" within the applications directory.


Viele Grüße,
Sascha