Portable version of Sonobus for Windows users

[Victor Westmann]

Hi there! I hope everyone is doing great today!

Just wanted to say that I did a little research on this list and was NOT able to find anything similar to this so that's why I am writing this message.

I would just like to know if it is possible to package Sonobus as a zip file where we can just decompress and run the software on Windows platform. This would help very much to spread this application even further through portable apps portals.

And that is pretty much it! This is not a priority by any means but it would be extremely cool if we could have this awesome application packaged this way.

Cheers to all of you and hugs from Brazil

Victor

[AtmanActive]

Let me just chime in here and explain that real, proper, 100% portable software on windows has these properties:

- does not require any setup, installation steps or preparation
- can run from any folder, automatically discovers the folder it is running from

- does not presume any standard folders and does not use them (Program Files, Documents,  AppData...)

- reads and writes it's own configuration exclusively from it's own folder or a subfolder of it, whose path is autodetected by the running exe

This allows one to keep all of their programs on their own drive (USB or otherwise) and run them on ANY windows whatsoever without having to do anything special.

Notable examples: Reaper

[Jesse Chappell]

Thanks, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem, I guess… I’ll put it on the list. 

I’m curious about what app portals (or other use cases) requires that kind of distribution though….

Jesse 

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[Victor Westmann]

Hi there. That is awesome! To hear this was accepted and added to the list of future tasks is dope! Thank you for this.

Just because you asked for some examples I am going to post 2 of them here: https://portableapps.com/ and https://portapps.io/ to name the ones I use the most!

Thank you and god bless this amazing project!

Victor

[Jeroen Platenkamp]

Would this be the solution to the "this is not a WIN32 application" popup i'm getting when trying to install sonobus on my WIN XPSP3 system ?

Op maandag 28 juni 2021 om 18:08:11 UTC+2 schreef jesse:

[Jesse Chappell]

Hmm, can you elaborate with more details about this error please? This is the first I’ve heard of it. The installer exe itself should be 32 bit, and it will install either the 64bit application or the 32bit application depending on what it detects. Exactly when and where does this error occur? Include screenshots, and hardware info, and windows version, etc. 

(PS: a portable distribution would include both 32 and 64bit versions of the app)

Thanks,

Jesse

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[Jesse Chappell]

Oh sorry, it’s only for windows 7 and up right now.  Just realized you are on windows XP! Almost forgot that still existed :O

Jesse

[yannick Gaultier]

Hi

Sorry to resurrect this, I have searched the Sonobus github repo for any trace of this but could not find anything.

Would you still consider making a portable version of Sonobus? that could run from a USB stick or similar?

It's not so much that some application portals "require it".

The benefit of portable apps is that you can carry them around on a USB stick (or rather a SSD drive these days) and just plug that drive from machine to machine, carrying around all your apps with you.

There are some limits to the concept, as some apps need to be installed (when system drivers are required I guess). 

This allows me, for instance, to switch from desktop to laptop in a minute with all my data, application and configuration.

Many thanks

[Jesse Chappell]

You should actually just be able to copy the SonoBus.exe from an installation and run it as-is from whatever media you want.  The only thing is that it will try to store its default settings in a spot in your user directory. I suppose that’s the only real software change that would be needed, to have it write the settings into the same folder as the application is if it sensed it wasn’t being run from a system installation dir. 

Jesse

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[yannick Gaultier]

Hi

Thanks for the quick answer. That's a good start, I guess I'd only have to copy these files to the other machine or I'll have to reconfigure Sonobus for each machine.

Alternatively, it is common to have a command-line switch either to force portable mode (and save data in the app folder or a subfolder of the app folder): sonobus.exe --portable

Also common is an option to set the config folder: ie sonobus.exe --config=d:\some\config\folder