yaP - yet another Portablizer

[guinness]

I thought you would have been a power user of Powershell!

I must admit it was a comment in passing without much thought, though you can get away with saying things like this on TPFC!

[Ascend4nt]

I thought you would have been a power user of Powershell!

I must admit it was a comment in passing without much thought, though you can get away with saying things like this on TPFC!

I'd love to recommend a script language, but I always find problems with them. I wrote a few VBScript wrappers years ago, but then came upon the problems of not being able to run it from other programs easily and having certain limitations.. AutoIt script is great to work with when you have it already installed, but compiling it produces huge executables, which I don't like to see on a Portable launcher. NSIS, which PortableApps.com uses, is another scripting language I would never recommend. It's got a weird syntax, was never meant to be used as a portable launcher, and requires several support DLL's just to do some common tasks (open something like 'firefoxportable' to see all the DLL's) - and those must always unpack to a temp directory to run.

Then there's PHP, Python, and the like.. there's 'compilers' but either they produce C/C++ output, or compile to an executable that depends on a number of external DLL's..

There's also other natively compilable languages I have looked at.. D and Go were pretty cool but the simplest 'hello, world' programs produce large executables. Haskell looked interesting too, but it's syntax is terrible. Might as well be the child of brainf*k.. haha.

Anyway, I'm rambling. It still seems these compilable Basic variants are the best for someone who doesn't want to learn a high-level language but still wants small executable sizes. I just wish there was one that tproli could use that he didn't have to pay for.

[tproli]

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I just wish there was one that tproli could use that he didn't have to pay for.

Second that

[guinness]

I second that. Also referring to your remark about NSIS, it's a good thing tproli moved on. I use it for my installer, syntax was easy to understand, but in terms of overall design and usage as something other than an installer, my hats off to them because it's like looking at a mathematicians whiteboard.

[tproli]

Just added a new feature to yaP (unreleased): yaP now starts batch files with command line parameters "before" and "after". Obviously the first one on the BEFORE run and the other after the main application is closed. This allows using "%1" to retrieve the "mode", so you can use only one batch file instead of two by using a conditional like this:

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IF "%1" == "after" GOTO after
	
:: do BEFORE stuff here
GOTO end
	
:after
    :: do AFTER stuff here
    GOTO end
:end

The main benefit here is that you can set up "global" variables in the .bat file (reg keys, directories) and use it in both BEFORE and AFTER runs.

I'm also thinking on adding some kind of password protection to the launcher. It would be very basic (e.g. saving some kind of hash in the .ini) and probably could be eliminated by simply editing the .ini file so perhaps that would not make much sense.

Any thoughts or tips on this?

[Midas]

Great.

Just a quick (and uninformed) thought: although using batched command files is easy and straightforward, the fact is that one is creating a nested system environment for them to run; it would be better if yaP could just execute commands directly in its own environment (should a nested one still be needed, it could easily be invoked by running CMD); or is this complete nonsense?

[tproli]

Not nonsense, and of course I have thought making yaP more user-friendly already. That is, allowing the user to only list directories and reg keys to take care of by yaP. And, optionally, making a small GUI to edit all of these conveniently. Is this what you were thinking of?

The reason I did not take this route is that I think yaP should remain a tool only. It is more flexible because one can do almost anything with batch files and making it simpler would limit its usability. Combining the two would make sense of course but currently I have no free resources

A beginner can use PortableApps or other ready-made portables and probably he won't even know yaP exists.

This may change in the future, but I guess it would be written in AutoIt instead, if ever.

[Midas]

I wasn't really envisioning doing away with batch commands -- it was thinking more along the lines of passing them to yaP for execution in the same shell, thus gaining the best of both worlds. But I can hardly fathom how to achieve that...

The reason I did not take this route is that I think yaP should remain a tool only. It is more flexible because one can do almost anything with batch files and making it simpler would limit its usability.

OTOH, I totaly agree with you on this...

[tproli]

I'd prefer to have the option to store the batch file in the launcher root folder (like in v0.23_fixed) instead of the extra 'yaP' folder...

I modified yaP so this setting is back, but only works with relative paths. This needs some further testing to make sure it does not fail somewhere.

[Midas]

Thanks. On a funny note, check http://goo.gl/maps/qV4jp...

[tproli]

They don't seem to be very portable Looks like a nice place.

[tproli]

drum roll...

yaP website launched!

Content (documentation) will be fine-tuned in the future but you can download the latest version and check the example configs.

Comments & suggestions & 18yr old brunettes are welcomed

[lwc]

Congrats. My gift to you is to be probably the first in the world to add it to a comparison table.

BTW, I'm late for the party but you should probably change the word Portablizer to Portabilizer (note the extra "i").

[tproli]

Great, thanks

Blocking attempts to run a non existing programs

I think it is Yes for yaP too as it displays a warning message if the main application is missing.

An additional folder and INI file for each and every program

No need for additional folders. "App" is created only for separating the main applicaton files from the launcher but it is only optional.

Portablizer vs Portabilizer: not sure about which one is the correct, I guess both of them are used. And that would also break the whole well-established marketing/branding concept of yaP

[guinness]

Second one is correct, but the first one has built up a name for itself.