Programs for creating portable. Editor's Column: Create a Portable Version of Any Application

Difficulty level: Easy

Step 1

First you need to install the Thinstall Virtualization Application. We take the program here. http://up-file.com/download/6 With the help of it we will do everything. Launch Thinstall and in the first window, click on the start button below.

Step 2

In the next window, select the drive letter on which the program you want to make portable will be installed (by default C: \ Program Files \ ...) And click the Pre-Install Scan button. Thinstall will then take a snapshot of the marked drive.

Step 3

Further. Leave the program window open and install the application, which will later become portable. After installation, treat the program (if necessary) and ALWAYS run it (if the application requires a system restart, agree. After restarting, Thinstall will start automatically and offer to find the last snapshot of the disk or take a new one. Leave it as it is and click next.)

Step 4

After we have closed the application, we return to the Thinstall window and click the Post-Install Scan button. Another snapshot will be taken from the disk.

Step 5

In the next window, tick the file, the name of which corresponds to the installed program (I have it Ice Book Reader), which will become our portable program. If the program has several modules (e.g. MS Office Word, Exel, etc.), then you need to mark all the modules, and in the Primary Data Container box, select the module that will be the main one. Click Continue.

Step 6

In the window that appears, select the folder where the result will be saved and click Save Results. After saving, close the Thinstall window.

7 step

Open the folder specified during saving, find the build file in it and run it. After compilation, we will have a bin folder, which contains our portable program that does not require installation and runs from any media

• it will not be possible to make portable programs that install drivers on the system (Nero, ClonCD, etc.), as well as pre-launch their services (Diskeeper, Acronis True Image, etc.).
• it is better to install and run Thinstaal on a "bare" system (there will be fewer errors), and even better on virtual machine(if you are interested, I will write how to install and use a virtual machine).
• not all programs created in this way work correctly, but those that work do it with a bang.
• there are a few more subtle points regarding config files, which are edited before creating the final application (if necessary, I will write which ones).

In one of the long-standing issues] [we had an article "Portable - here it is, joy", where we told how you can make a portable version from almost any program that will run without installation, write it to a USB flash drive and always carry it with you ... Then the expensive Thinstall utility was launched. Later, this project was bought by VMware, and all of its functionality is now presented in VMware application ThinApp. Like other products of this company, ThinApp is engaged in virtualization, or rather, application virtualization. The task of such an operation is to create a virtual environment for a particular application. This application should not be aware of what is running on another computer; it can, as intended by the developers, access the registry, file system and find there keys and files that were added during the installation procedure. Application files and all necessary data are placed in a single executable .EXE file. During its launch, a virtual environment is deployed in the system, which emulates the keys you need registry, DDL's, libraries third party developers, all kinds of frameworks, and the application starts up as if nothing had happened. At the same time, no drivers are installed into the system, no changes are made to the registry - the application runs completely inside the virtual environment. Nice approach, and ThinApp implements it perfectly, but one catch - the solution costs at least $ 6050. Not sour, right?

However, the company's appetite may soon subside, because recently appeared on the Web real alternative for application virtualization. Cameyo (www.cameyo.com) does exactly the same thing as ThinApp, with the only difference that it doesn't ask for anything. And you know, if I were VMware, I would start to be afraid. It's hard to imagine how the porting process can be made even easier than Cameyo does. After installing from a 1.5 MB distribution, the user is offered an interface with two buttons: one for creating a new container, and the other for modifying previously created packages. If you click on the first ("Capture installation") the program will start taking a snapshot of the system, saving the state for itself file system and the registry - she will have to build on this information. As soon as the snapshot is made, Cameyo will offer to start installing the application for which you need to make a Portable version. Let it be Opera, and for the sake of completeness - also a Flash player for it, as well as a Java plugin. There are no problems here, we just install everything as usual; if a reboot is required, we reboot safely (this is processed correctly). Once the installation and configuration are finished, you can click on the "Install done" button. At this point, Cameyo will once again take a snapshot of the system to compare what changes have occurred, and based on this data, create a Portable package. The process may take several minutes, after which the program will delight you with the message "Package successfully created".

That, in fact, is all. You can try to run the resulting EXE file on any Windows system and make sure that both the browser itself and everything else installed plugins work. You can write to a USB flash drive and use it on any computer without any problems. True, there is one caveat - quite a lot of different data is placed in the container, so the weight of the package can be quite impressive. For example, the resulting package with Opera 10.62 weighs as much as 139 MB. But there is a secret here: if you examine the contents of the container, it is easy to find in it the files that Cameyo placed in it by mistake, and in fact there is no need to virtualize them. Let's say that my Opera package contains a file with the Dropbox index, which weighs almost 15 MB, and this is a tenth of the total volume of the resulting package. You can see what is inside the container and make changes through Cameyo by clicking on the second (and last) available button "Edit existing package". On the "Files" and "Registry" tabs, it is easy to see which files and registry branches are emulated. If necessary, you can remove any element, or vice versa, add something. An interesting option is available on the very first General tab - Isolation Mode. By default, any Portable application runs completely in isolation and cannot make changes to the system. However, if necessary, the package mode can be changed to "Full Access", and then the program will have full access to files and the registry, like any other application.

In the vastness of the network, you can find a bunch of software and among the most popular programs there are a lot of portable versions. And if you have some infrequent program that is nowhere to be found portable version what to do in this case? In such a situation, there is a very simple way out - you can make such a program yourself. And believe me, there is nothing difficult in this. We just need a special utility and setup file the program we want to make portable.

Building a Portable program

There are many special utilities that can create portable software (like Cameyo or P-Apps). We will not consider all of them, because the interface is practically the same everywhere. V this example we will use the utility Thinstall Virtualization Suite... And as a test subject, we'll have the Firefox browser. Download to your computer this utility... You can download it. After that, unpack the downloaded archive to any convenient folder and in it, run the file named Setup capture.exe.

The utility works on the principle of comparing system images before and after installing software, which should become portable. From the beginning, you need to analyze the initial state of the system, click on the "Next" button.

It's not worth changing the settings, we leave everything as it is. To start scanning system disk and registry parameters, click the "Post-install Scan" button.

Now you need to wait a little, it will take some time. Do not close the program under any circumstances, just minimize it. Next, grab a program that is destined to be portable. As mentioned above, we will, for our experiments, use the Firefox browser. Install this software as is usually done.
After installation, launch the browser and customize it for yourself. When the program is successfully installed and has all necessary settings, open the previously minimized utility window. You will now need to re-analyze the system. Just click "Post-install scan" and select the exe-file designed to run the "experimental" software. Selecting Mozilla Firefox.exe, click on the button to continue the operation "Continue".

Our browser folder will be created in the same folder where the utility is located. These files can be found in the following path: C: \ Thinstall Virtualization Suite 3.358 portable \ Captures \ Mozilla Firefox

Now remove all empty and non-program folders. It's best to move them to any other folder, just in case. So that you can easily return them to their original place.

After cleaning the contents of the folder, proceed to editing the registry files. Launch Registry Editor (Win + R => regedit => OK) and open the following files:

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER.txt
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.txt
• HKEY_USERS.txt

Here you need to delete everything that is not related to Firefox browser... That being said, do not leave extra spaces, it may interfere with the build of the program. After that, edit the project parameters and special file with Package.ini settings (optional). This file contains several sections. The semicolon before any parameter turns it into a comment, and it becomes unavailable.

Chapter - allows you to customize the compression. But it should be borne in mind that when unpacking and packing files, a lot of system resources will be consumed.
CompressionType = None
CompressionType = Fast

Chapter - is responsible for the interaction of the program with external elements systems.
Writecopy- the parameter indicates the storage of all changes and settings inside the folder with the portable program.
Merged- and this parameter will allow making changes in the system.

DirectoryIsolationMode = WriteCopy
DirectoryIsolationMode = Merged

SandboxName- defines the name of the folder for storing all changes and parameters. At standard settings, such a folder is located in the following path:
Those who often use portable software can look into this directory and find there a large number of unnecessary garbage... Agree, this is not very good.

The SandboxPath parameter defines the path where it will be located this folder... By the way, this parameter may not be present in the settings file. As we have already shown, all parameters are initially stored in the system, along the above path. To store all this in the same folder, along with the portable program, specify the following parameter value: SandboxPath =. In chapter . It can be placed right after the description this parameter... Thanks to this, all files will be in one folder and the system will not become polluted with all kinds of rubbish. Have you cleaned and adjusted everything? Ok, now there is only one left, the final step - run the file named build.bat and get ready-made program which can work without installation. Look for it in the bin folder.