Altap Salamander Support Forums

Will the new version have an easy option to run AS as a Portable install?

I have most of my regular programs installed on a USB key which I move from system to system and the biggest missing piece is a good file manager. Currently I'm installing AS on all systems I use but it's a drag having to do that. Will 3.0 support reading and writing its settings from an ini file rather than the registry? (Localized settings are the wave of the future, you know. )

Thanks and keep up the good work.

I'm sorry, we will not be able to switch from Registry to INI file in AS 3.0. It can be possible in some minor update.

Jan Rysavy wrote:I'm sorry, we will not be able to switch from Registry to INI file in AS 3.0. It can be possible in some minor update.

I would appreciate it. I'm searching for a portable app as a replacement in the meantime but nothing else is as good.

There are several workarounds described somewhere around this forum. Just use the forum search and look for "portable".

Ether wrote:There are several workarounds described somewhere around this forum. Just use the forum search and look for "portable".

Yes, I've tried one of them (or two?). They involved writing to the registry and removing the settings afterwards and didn't work that well for me.

Sorry to revive old thread, but I agree with OP that there is no reasonable way to use AS on portable device, while other players in same arena offer this possibility.

Personally for me it's not that hard to use TC instead, but as I'm Automation plugin addict I would have to convert my scripts and forget about provided simple dialogs for user interaction. Also I'm used to AS and it's default plugins, and feel strange that portable solution isn't available.

Hope my comment isn't harsh and thought to ask why is this feature so low rated, and is there any status?

We would like to implement this feature but it will take some time. Now we need to release version 3.0 and implement UAC support.

You can copy your installed Altap Salamander from Program Files to USB drive and it will works like portable app.
Sometimes I am using that way with no problems ...

Also please look at http://forum.altap.cz/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3084

Jan, thanks for your reply and I hope 3.1 installation will include portable option

The thread you all link couple of times in this (and similar) thread is hard attempt, but far from declaring it portable
Despite complicated workaround, writing to registry is not something many people can afford when using USB, without alerting security software for no apparent reason
Perhaps vmware image can be generated and shared, but that's also not as answer.

Also having portable version is not just in the binary image, but having placeholder for portable drive and various percussion helpers that developers of AS will concern as in any AS feature in the past.
I'm glad I (we) got reply for this request, because everything in AS is simply perfect, not just to say that but I believe in this peace of software and use it daily for years.

Jan Rysavy wrote:Also please look at http://forum.altap.cz/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3084

For me (as for otrov) anything that involves writing to the registry (even temporarily) is a non-starter.

I'm a bit surprised it's a huge deal to switch from using the registry to using ini files. I've done it a number of times myself by switching calls to RegSetValueEx() with WritePrivateProfileString() and RegQueryValueEx() with GetPrivateProfileString(). Even with large programs it usually only takes a day or so.

Either way, keep up the good work.

jd

We have no experience with this, please give us more information.

Do you need to start Salamander on some protected computers where unknown applications (like Salamander) cannot write anything to registry? Or do you have some restrictions on registry keys? E.g. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software is OK, but HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT is forbidden?

I'm afraid that some plugins cannot work without access to registry. Eroiica registers its DLLs to registry because it is using COM model, without registering these DLLs to registry, it simply cannot work and I do not believe Parallax (author) will change COM to anything else. Next is WinSCP, it has configuration in own key in registry (not under Salamander's key), it shares configuration with standalone version of WinSCP.

Drag&drop from archives and filesystem plugins (e.g. FTP) to Explorer cannot work without registering our DLL with copy-hook in registry.

We have expected that if we place configuration in some special key ("portable" in name to avoid collision with client's installed Salamander) in registry and will create this key on start (load it from configuration file from USB) and remove this key on exit, it will be OK. We can register copy-hook to our DLL copied to TEMP directory and unregister it on Salamander's exit and schedule DLL in TEMP for deletion on Windows shutdown (or start). The same with Eroiica's registration and WinSCP configuration, simply make special support for start and exit of portable version (loading from file and cleaning from registry).

I don't think it is adequate to register any com components or shell extensions in a portable version. In my opinion, no files containing program code should be copied to the target system, not even to the TEMP directory. This excludes any mechanisms that potentially prohibit proper unloading of any plugins, hooks, shell extensions and the likes that may be used by any program other then Salamander itself. Even in the case of a crash (abnormal termination of any kind), nothing should remain on the target computer except maybe temporary data files in the user's TEMP folder.

I consider it Ok, if some functionality is therefore not (yet) available in a portable installation. Don't let those plugins and non-essential functions deter you from providing a portable version.

Unfortunately I don't see we can offer portable AS without using registry and TEMP directory (soon) because it would be too limited: no Eroiica Viewer, WinSCP plugin, drag&drop, configuration in Salamander and plugins. Wasted time...

That's not what I meant at all!
My intention was to say that likely a majority of users would prefer to do without some rarely used, non-essential features, than possibly not being able to use Salamander at all. And for most of the rest you might offer options to use that other features at the expense of using the host's registry and possibly leaving behind, temporarily or permanently, some files or configuration settings.

Concerning the components you consider a show stopper:

• Eroiica Viewer
  If I have any chance, I avoid it. Most of the file formats it support according to http://www.altap.cz/salamander/features/eroiica-viewer/ I have newer come across. Many of the rest can be viewed with with standard windows programs, are outdated, render in such a bad quality that I would not want to read anything in that display unless the rendering aborts with an error stating that some unsupported feature of the document is used anyway or the rendering is distorted beyond recognition. And then it's awfully slow. So, in short, for those file formats I care about I ether use the Windows standard viewer/editor or bring along a capable portable viewer myself. Besides, is there a 64-bit version by now?
• WinSCP plugin
  I personally have never had the need to use it, the ftp plugin always did what i needed. I see that this may be a quite an essential feature for some though. But still, network communications is not the core of Altap Salamander, file management on local storage and LAN is. I believe only very view user would rather have no portable Salamander than one without WinSCP plugin.
• drag&drop
  I used Salamander on many systems on which I did not install it, but copied it over, always without the shell extension dll. I never ever got an error or missed a feature at all. Besides, I thought the shell extension is just to support plugin file systems. And drag'n'drop is no feature you cannot do without. Just use the copy/move commands.
• configuration in Salamander
  Well, see johnd126's post in this thread
• configuration in plugins
  I strongly hope, that is the same as "configuration in Salamander", as long as the programmer used the provided API. The automation plugin provides methods, so I strongly assume the API does so too. Otherwise the programmer needs to update the plugin, just as you update the main application.

Jan Rysavy wrote:Wasted time...

I disagree.
What about creating a poll on this?