making a non portable app portable?

[tony.silveira]

hey guys,

i run into this issue all too often.  a reinstall of windows or this last tome, a windows update caused a bunch of emu controls to stop working and the thing they all gave in common is that they store some kk d if config file buried somewhere on my c drive.

so, is there any way to make a nonportable app portable?  force these apps that save something to the c drive to save them to where user defines?

thanks!

[Osirus23]

What software is this? There is no universal solution. I can't think of an installer that I've used that didn't prompt me to specify an install location.

However, install location (C or D drive like you said) isn't the issue with portability, the issue is if the installer writes anything to the registry or places its config files somewhere outside of its install folder, like the User Documents folder instead. It's stuff like that that will make an application non-portable.

[DrakeTungsten]

I've used (or at least sampled) dozens of emulators over the years, and one of the first things I do is try to make them portable. I have yet to run across one that I couldn't make at least sort-of portable. IIRC, the most work I've had to do is create an installation batch file (or shell script) to create a junction or link which maps some hard-coded directory to the location inside my portable directory structure where I keep the needed files. I only remember one emulator making use of the registry, so that usually isn't an issue. Which emulators are you using?

There are programs which take snapshots of your PC (registry and directory structure) for the purpose of comparing pre and post-install snapshots to see what changes an install made, but I have found them to be unreliable, and by the time they finish running, you probably could have consulted the emulator's documentation and applied some common sense to get the information you're looking for.

[Arroyo]

hey guys,

i run into this issue all too often.  a reinstall of windows or this last tome, a windows update caused a bunch of emu controls to stop working and the thing they all gave in common is that they store some kk d if config file buried somewhere on my c drive.

so, is there any way to make a nonportable app portable?  force these apps that save something to the c drive to save them to where user defines?

thanks!

Wont be portable in that you would have to do a one time reassign, however I have been using this as a solution for the controllers getting remapped on a computer restart or unplug and it’s working great:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroArch/comments/8wj03s/usb_device_id_change_on_reboot_breaking/

Haven’t tried it through an update but I imagine it should survive that.

[keilmillerjr]

Turn off automatic updates.