UEStudio Portable?

UEStudio Portable?

1
NewbieNewbie
1

    Apr 29, 2010#1

    Hello,

    Is it possible to make UEStudio Portable? Or at least make the configuration on a different location (aka usage with dropbox to sync configurations)?

    Thanks,

    Dennis

    2362
    MasterMaster
    2362

      Apr 29, 2010#2

      I was able to make UEStudio into a portable application (not an official portableapps.com application, although it works with that just fine for me.)

      The way I did it was to start by moving the UEStudio.INI file into the same directory with UEStudio. It will look there first before it looks in the AppData directory. I wish they would have placed it there to start with. Then I edited the UEStudio.INI file for everything that was pointing to an area outside the actual program directory, and created appropriate directories as subdirectories within the program directory to place those items in. I made the changes in UEStudio.INI to point to these new locations, and moved those files into those locations.

      Now, that in itself only helps UEStudio to contain itself. It will not make it portable. The next thing I did was to write a little launcher program that would reside in a directory below UEStudio. Instead of launching UEStudio directly, I launch the "Launching application" which will auto-detect the current drive letter, then edit UEStudio.INI and do a global search and replace from the "previous" drive letter (kept in the launcher's configuration file) with the current drive letter (only if it changed.) It will then launch UEStudio and pass along any command line parameters that were passed to it.

      If you are interested, I can make this launching program available. As you have to set up an INI file for the launcher to specify the "last used drive letter" and the location of any and all INI files that need to be edited, and the location and name of the program to be launched, it should work with any program that relies on an INI file to read file locations.

      The beauty of it is, since I keep all my files that I edit on the same portable drive, the drive letters for those are changed as well, and UEStudio has no problem "reopening" all previously open files when I launch from another computer.

      The downside of this is that you lose FTP and SSH support. It just won't work as a portable option.

      I have used this same procedure for previous versions of UltraEdit before I changed over to UEStudio. (14 and 15) Works just the same for that, and again, no FTP or SSH.

      If you need FTP on the go, I recommend a good portable FTP program. I also recommend PortablePutty. I haven't tested CVS with this setup, as I don't use it.

      I use the FTP well enough, however, I have 2 installs. One full install to my hard-drive, where I have made the same changes, but don't use the launcher. Then I have another install on my portable drive. I use sync software to synchronize the 2 directories to keep my configuration up to date. I keep my "portable" drive mirrored on my C: drive. That way, I sync from my "Program Files\IDM" directory to my "PortableApps\IDM" directory on my C: drive, then I sync my "PortableApps" from my C: to my portable drive. Since I only travel with it once a week, it works out quite well that way. I've got FTP at home, but no FTP on the go. I can live with that.

      EDIT: The above worked well with UEStudio 9.30. However, UEStudio '10 is forcing the registration file to go to the Application Data directory, and it can't be moved. This makes it impossible to make it portable and it stay registered when you travel. As I don't have a laptop, and depend on my portable USB Hard Drive when I travel, this is a serious issue for me. A workaround for this should be to make a wrapper program using one of the PortableApps.com wrapper programs that redirects the AppData directory per program launched. I'll have to give that a try. There is always a way to wrap a program to redefine it, if you're willing to go to the trouble to do it properly. Since I need this badly, I'll have to go to that trouble.
      “Don’t document the problem, fix it.” – Atli Björgvin Oddsson