Portableapps.com Installer
Tanesha Prately
PortableApps.com Format Note - The installer is designed for apps that are already in the proper PortableApps.com Format. For information on getting your app up to speed, please see the PortableApps.com Format Specification.
PortableApps.com is proud to announce that PortableApps.com Installer 3.8.1 has been released. The PortableApps.com Installer allows you to quickly package your portable apps in an easy-to-use installer without having to write or compile any code. This release adds support for InnoSetup extraction in live installers, 32-bit/64-bit optional sections, and removes legacy MD5 support. The PortableApps.com Format and PortableApps.com Application Template have also been updated. The PortableApps.com Format Specification and installer are available for outside developers to use and can be used freely with free open source and freeware applications. Commercial use is available by contacting PortableApps.com.
The PortableApps.com Installer allows software publishers to package their apps using our popular tools. Open source projects can use our installer (and all source is included and licensed under the GPL) and release their own PAF files. Freeware publishers can also use our installer with no special permission needed for no charge. Commercial publishers can contact us for details.
PortableApps.com Installer is packaged, appropriately, as a PortableApps.com Installer so it will automatically detect an existing PortableApps.com installation when your drive is plugged in. It supports upgrades by installing right over an existing copy, preserving all settings. And it's in PortableApps.com Format, so it automatically works with the PortableApps.com Platform including the Menu and Backup Utility.
After release, I noticed a bug in 3.8.0 with the upcoming Platform's option to direct whether or not to install the 32-bit versions in apps set to split them up. The 3.8.1 release fixes that issue so apps updated with the new installer will work out of the box with the next Platform beta.
Today's release of FileZilla Portable 3.66.1 makes use of the new PA.c Installer feature allowing the end user to select either 64-bit Only or DualMode with 64-bit and 32-bit support. See a Screenshot.
Hi, I wanted to double-check my understanding of the portableapps.com standalone installation / usage as there were a few apps I was interested in using, but I downloaded 2 as a test and neither work - so either I've mis-understood something or there are some issues!
> NOTE The support page says: "just click the Download button from the application's page. You'll see a SourceForge download page that automatically selects a download server close to you and redirects you to the download."
> NOTE The support page says to: "If you're running it standalone, browse to the directory you installed the AppNamePortable directory you installed to and then double-click the AppNamePortable.exe file. Then, just use the app as you'd use the regular version.
However, in my case when I try to run D:\Downloads\PortableApps.com\PDF-XChangeEditorPortable\PDF-XChangeEditorPortable.exe, the app crashes immediately with the following error: "The application was unable to start correctly (Oxc000007b). Click OK to close the application,"
When I tried to run "D:\Downloads\PortableApps.com\SSD-ZPortable\SSD-ZPortable.exe" as a second test, this does not even open! -- I get a UAC prompt (which I approve) however nothing then appears and I can't detect the app running in task manager
When checking the preview before posting, this page did not look right at all, however I copied into into an external markdown validator and it confirmed all the formatting was correct and the page looked fine there... So if this page reads very badly, I'm sorry, I tried but must be a portableapps.com issue.
If you turned on mandatory ASLR within Windows Security, it'll break quite a few Windows executables and they'll throw an error like that. Many of our launchers will have that issue as they are NSIS2 based.
Sadly though, this trick did not work for SSD-ZPortable.exe do you know what else could be interfering with this? (I checked my security settings and all exploit preventions are turned currently on)
I appreciate your advise about this causing problems for several apps but just from my own experience I have over 90 apps I use portably (in their native portable version) and never experienced this issue before so was sceptical this would work, but don't get me wrong am very happy to be proved wrong in this case! #alwayslearning
Only the ASLR setting will interfere with all apps based on the NSIS2 PA.c Launcher to my knowledge. So, the SSD-ZPortable.exe launcher should be fine. I'm guessing another security setting you turned on is interfering with SSD-Z itself. You can check by opening up the SSD-ZPortable\App\SSD-Z directory and running SSD-Z.exe directly.
I'll add my opinion of the requirement of the filename of the portable app installer which need internet connection. I think that is so molest. I think is better a window that request the approbation of the internet access, also as the license screen.
In that the person was obviously online when they downloaded the installer and probably a bunch of other PortableApp apps why would they have any concern about the install needing to be online also????
The only time you'd be concerned with it is when running the installer. And since the name includes the word ONLINE and the page you just downloaded it from states "Online Installer: This is an online installer that will download additional files during setup.", I think it's a bit unnecessary.
What purpose would having a popup that stops installation and requires an additional user input serve? It's not providing any new information since the user already has multiple cues that this installer will go online.
The only place being considered is the Welcome screen but will require additional input from all our translators to work with all 57 languages the installer supports. It will begin appearing in 1.0.1 in English and then other languages as the translations are added.
AppNamePortable: contains the main application launcher, typically named AppNamePortable.exe and the main help file help.html. No other files are present in this directory by default.
App: contains all the binary and other files that make up the application itself, usually within a directory called AppName. The other directory called AppInfo (discussed in section 2) contains the configuration details for the PortableApps.com Platform as well as the icons used within the menu. It may also contain the launcher.ini configuration file used for the PortableApps.com Launcher. The third directory, DefaultData is usually used as a container for the default files to be placed within the Data directory. Generally, the launcher, when run, will check if there is a set of files within Data and, if not, will copy them from DefaultData. The next release of the PortableApps.com Installer will do the same.
Data: contains all the user data for the application including settings, configuration and other data that would usually be stored within APPDATA for a locally installed application. The applications released by PortableApps.com typically contain the settings in a settings subdirectory, profiles for Mozilla apps in a profiles subdirectory. No application components (binary files, etc) should be contained within the Data directory. The launcher or application must be able to recreate the Data directory and all required files within it if it is missing.
Other: contains files that don't fit into the other categories. The additional images and other files used by help.html included in the main AppNamePortable are included in a Help subdirectory in the Other directory. Images for the help file would be included in an Images subdirectory within the Help subdirectory.
Any source code or source code licensing as well as the source files for the PortableApps.com Installer (if desired) are included within the Source subdirectory. This may include the source for the AppNamePortable.exe launcher, a readme.txt file detailing the usage of the launcher, license information and other files.
The portable app makes available its configuration information to the PortableApps.com Platform by way of the AppInfo details. Within the AppNamePortable\App directory, an AppInfo directory contains an appinfo.ini file as well as any icons used within the menu (explained in Section 3). The appinfo.ini file consists of the following:
AppID is the globally unique id for the application. Apps released by PortableApps.com or directly by the publisher of the regular version of the software will generally just be the name without spaces. Apps released by other entities must be AppNamePortable-example.com where example.com is their company domain. Apps released by individuals on PortableApps.com that aren't working towards making it an official PortableApps.com release must be AppNamePortable-username where username is the PortableApps.com username. AppIDs may contain letters, numbers, periods ( . ), dashes ( - ), plus signs ( + ) and underscores ( _ ).
BaseAppName (optional) is the name of the base app if it differs from the launcher name. This should only be used when legally required for launchers in specific apps. When not needed it should be left out of appinfo.ini.
Publisher is the name of the app publisher as it appears in a hover tip in the next PortableApps.com Platform release and within the app details screen. If you are repackaging an app written by someone else, they should also be listed.
Category is the category that the application falls into within the PortableApps.com Platform. Valid entries are: Accessibility, Development, Education, Games, Graphics & Pictures, Internet, Music & Video, Office, Security or Utilities. Only these *exact* entries are supported and should be used regardless of the default language of the base app (even if this is a German application, it should still use the English translation of the category).
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