Portable Software Suites and KC Softwares

[scheff]

I new that some products by some software publishers are released as ordinary installable software using Microsoft Software Installer (MSI) or compatible format, Windows Application format as used with Microsoft Store resp. third party company store, or as a portable software being copied into the file system without any installation or registration, and a few using the PortableApps framework resp. suite.

Then I found that KC Softwares does release at least some of its products compatible with MSI format and as portable software while the PortableApps team is integrating the latter into its suite.

As I still have some older computers with multi-boot configuration and no longer supported Windows versions, I've disabled Internet acces on these. I nevertheless can use portable software suites on these devices. So I played a little bit around with such portable software suites and found more and more powerful ones. I don't know yet, onto which extent they comply with their varying feature promises as their understanding of portable varies slightly. And those I know, know and cooperate with each other. So I found, that KC Softwares is integrated not only into PortableApps suite but also in SyMenu Suite. The first is mentioned sometimes in forum and Mantis. But I didn't know of such integration of these sources.

Are there other portable software suites with integration of KC Softwares products?

What's the experience of other users with portable software suites not of PortableApps framework and their integration of KC Softwares products?

[Kyle_Katarn]

Integration in PartableApp framework is done by PA team, not me. They likely provide a SDK so that you can contribute if required. If they are able to do it on SUMo, Kcleaner,... all our product shoulbe able to be integrated in a similar way.

I'm not aware (nor involved !) in integration in any other suite (by happy to learn that some do ) !

[Barrypreni]

Im not sure what FriendlyCache does, but could it be written to the application folder instead of the registry?

[Kyle_Katarn]

What do you mean ?

[scheff]

Im not sure what FriendlyCache does, but could it be written to the application folder instead of the registry?

I don't understand neither. And in my first impression, it seems to me that applies for you too. I didn't hear of FriendlyCache before. A quick lookup didn't show a definition nor explanation neither. But it seemed not to relate to your post. It seems that taking care of FriendlyCache influences how Windows interacts with programs taking such policies as a guide. These policies are entered into the Windows registry. It seems that there are means how programs can influence how things are entered into the Windows registry and the system administrators can influence this too. Did I understand something wrong?
Do you have a better URL for understanding FriendlyCache?

Perhaps you mixed up different concepts. For portability, there exist different definitions. None of them I know has to do with FriendlyCache. But the posters proposal to write to application folder instead of the registry has to do with these definitions. And in addition, it would be kind and fine, if the poster would add to what kind of data he refers that he means written to the registry and he prefers written to the application folder. I didn't analyze it. Usually this has to do with some kind of configuration data which may be written to the registry, some ini-file, xml-file or some other database or configuration file. The problem is if such configuration data is user specific on a multi-user system like Windows, when to use which users configuration if not using policies of Windows registry for such distinction. So were you assuming being the only user of SUMo on that computer, and how would you handle in your proposal if a visitor wants to use it too with different preferences?

SUMo detects if it is running in portable mode or installed mode and may hence change policy and behaviour accordingly. Does SUMo write anything to Windows registry when detecting of running in portable mode?

[Kyle_Katarn]

No use of registry but still some file on local FS. Open ticket for this.

[scheff]

No use of registry but still some file on local FS. Open ticket for this.

I prefer getting a better understanding before proceeding as proposed.

Classically installed software may be installed for every user or only for the installing user. This choice may depends on software publishers knowledge and on installing users permissions (UAC). In principle, portable software may be "installed" resp. copied also just for the copying user or for a group of users or any user i.e. by copying onto a Windows Share with appropriate permissions. So detecting running in portable mode is not sufficient for selecting different profiles for different users and corresponding write resp. output policy. Use of (optional) environment variables and command line options may influence this too (in the future).

To what else do you refer to be written to local file system beyond installed directory and subdirectories when running in portable mode?
Does this concern log files, exports and caches?

And if I remember right, there is already an issue on profiles opened in Mantis, not for the purpose of portability but for defining different sets of additional directories according to user scenario and preferences with examples and reasoning provided. It concerns more handling of portable software not the portable mode of SUMo itself.

Solution to both aspects may be handled with either user specific subdirectories or user configured prefixes.