The advantages of Portable Apps

Re: The advantages of Portable Apps

Reply #25 – 2014-03-21, 23:25:48

Re: The advantages of Portable Apps

Reply #26 – 2014-03-22, 00:15:53

j7n: well, well... your reply reminded me that I totally missed the point (I was trying to reach through my experiences to complete with an - ) answer(ing) to the question of the OP for portable across platforms, whereas I only mentioned the benefits for a singular platform/desktop-pc (or the hazards therein). So let me recapture my thoughts and continue with:

I am not sure, but it must have been around the time of the End of the Amiga or its OS Successors, where the idea came up of semi-compiled installer packages which where compiled/optimized during install on the particular platform/hardware/os setting... an idea which (as it, e.g. under windows, would need an installed compiler (like windows preinstalled with VSExpress, GCC or such) ) didn't really make it through to nowadays yearcycle. I am now wondering why portable apps are not, at least under *nix systems, evolving on that idea - all configuration/settings in the directory of the app, the source/half-way-compiled binaries within that directory and with starting the app it would compile anew under a formerly not known system -- ok, would call for lots of free space available on that "portable"-medium and under windows it would need the presence of compilers, but it could be... hey wait, thats what Java/Python and such is usable for... so to the OP: either we mean "portable" within a given platform and compiled binaries making use of every advantage there is, or we mean "portable" across platforms and we give up optimization/speed/resource management for the benefit of being "portable"

explain that to the fancycancy used fanboys of either Windows or *nix platforms who prefer 3D/Touchpad/Phone effects-overladen-unusebility over plain and simple (productivity) GUIs :p