Quote:
Originally Posted by spwolf
so... do we make extra effort to make it work perfectly (shell, assoc), or do we just package it with 5 minute job like portable apps and lunch it?
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You can do it in two steps.
1) Make a powerarc.exe that doesn't require information to be written to the registry, gets all of the required configuration information from files in the directory the executable resides in, and doesn't need COM information installed in the registry (there are ways to configure COM objects in manifest files instead). This is the basic portability requirement, and lets anyone use the program from a USB stick without admin rights on the computer and without needing to buy into any particular 'portability shell'.
Of course, you don't get shell integration. But sometimes I just want to look at or extract files from an archive that might not be supported on the machine I'm currently at. I can figure out how to open it from within PA - I'm not completely dense. Also, I happen to have a portable file manager (XYPlorer) that can be configured with portable file associations - I could configure that file manager to portably open PA's files.
2) create a package for Portable Apps (or whichever you decide on) that brings the bells and whistles for those who want them. As far as I know, the work done for #1 would help with integrating things into this step - it certainly wouldn't make things harder.