[Suggestion] Would it be possible to make a portable app?

Board for discussions around the Basilisk web browser.

Moderator: Basilisk-Dev

thedbz2k

[Suggestion] Would it be possible to make a portable app?

Unread post by thedbz2k » 2017-11-25, 04:54

I think a true portable app would be nice since the zip isn't as portable because it stores profile in appdata. :D

User avatar
Moonchild
Pale Moon guru
Pale Moon guru
Posts: 35473
Joined: 2011-08-28, 17:27
Location: Motala, SE
Contact:

Re: [Suggestion] Would it be possible to make a portable app?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2017-11-25, 11:35

If people are interested in this, then maybe someone should step up to create a portable version, e.g. toss the idea up at portableapps.com or similar.
We don't have the capacity to set up and maintain more than the standard versions of Basilisk. Anyone in the community is welcome to set up and maintain a portable distribution of this browser; I do recommend that any such effort will be postponed until M2 (the next public release) is published, because there are a number of release engineering issues that need to be sorted in the first release before it's easily usable as such (specifically the universal CRT dependencies).
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
"Linux makes everything difficult." -- Lyceus Anubite

Sun42

Re: [Suggestion] Would it be possible to make a portable app?

Unread post by Sun42 » 2017-12-02, 15:06

thedbz2k wrote:I think a true portable app would be nice since the zip isn't as portable because it stores profile in appdata. :D
You can simply use the files from palemoon portable - works for me.

Follow these steps...
1. replace bin/palemoon with bin/basilik (from the zip download)
2. if you want to try to continue to use your pm profile rename profile/palemoon to profile/basilisk - or move your ff56 profile to it
3. rename exe/ini "Palemoon-Portable" to "Basilisk-Portable"
4. in the ini, replace "Palemoon" and "Pale Moon" with "Basilisk"
5. replace the pm splash or disable it in the ini with ShowSplash=false

I don't think it auto-updates (though I haven't tried tbh) so you always have to manually copy the files from the newest .zip

coffeebreak
Moon Magic practitioner
Moon Magic practitioner
Posts: 2986
Joined: 2015-09-26, 04:51
Location: U.S.

Re: [Suggestion] Would it be possible to make a portable app?

Unread post by coffeebreak » 2017-12-02, 17:07

Sun42 wrote:You can simply use the files from palemoon portable...

Thank you for the tip. It works well.

dapgo
Fanatic
Fanatic
Posts: 206
Joined: 2016-10-11, 11:36

Re: [Suggestion] Would it be possible to make a portable app?

Unread post by dapgo » 2018-01-25, 12:27

I agree with the request of a portable version, it is very nice to have the extensions under the main folder.

I saw in a message below that it is very easy to do but it was too late and i had copied copied profile:
from:
\User\Palemoon\Profiles\Default\

to:
C:\Users\myuser\AppData\Roaming\Moonchild Productions\Basilisk\Profiles\xxxxxx.default\

And Basilisk seems to be working smoothly with my previous configuration :thumbup:
Moonchild wrote:If people are interested in this, then maybe someone should step up to create a portable version, e.g. toss the idea up at portableapps.com or similar.
We don't have the capacity to set up and maintain more than the standard versions of Basilisk. Anyone in the community is welcome to set up and maintain a portable distribution of this browser; I do recommend that any such effort will be postponed until M2 (the next public release) is published, because there are a number of release engineering issues that need to be sorted in the first release before it's easily usable as such (specifically the universal CRT dependencies).

ianas

Re: [Suggestion] Would it be possible to make a portable app?

Unread post by ianas » 2018-01-30, 10:20

pcxFirefox is portable out of the box (there's a value to be set in an ini file)
https://github.com/xunxun1982/pcxfirefox
https://pcxfirefox.wordpress.com/2017/0 ... -released/
maybe you can borrow some code from it
there's always the Firefox launcher from portableapps.com
https://portableapps.com/support/firefo ... ifications
as far as I can tell the only thing needed for a Basilisk portable would be to change the name of the executable the launcher uses

Fedor2

Re: [Suggestion] Would it be possible to make a portable app?

Unread post by Fedor2 » 2018-01-31, 01:53

Any regular mozilla browser including Palemoon can launched in portable mode with two command line parameters: profile and no-remote

Code: Select all

C:\Palemoon\palemoon.exe -no-remote -profile C:\Palemoon\profile
profile parameter is obvious, no-remote is for not interacting with other, you can launch many browser instances simultaneously with different profiles.

So make a shortcut and pack with 7zsd_LZMA2 for example and thats all.
pcxFirefox is portable out of the box
there used so called temtutil, like palemoon-portanle.exe, but dll, so i sayd not out of the box.
Last edited by Fedor2 on 2018-01-31, 01:58, edited 2 times in total.

dapgo
Fanatic
Fanatic
Posts: 206
Joined: 2016-10-11, 11:36

Re: [Suggestion] Would it be possible to make a portable app?

Unread post by dapgo » 2018-01-31, 12:33

About doing shortcuts, Windows 7 users have to be careful, because:

[*]You launch the app from .batch
[*]You have the app icon in the taskbar
[*]You click on "Pin this program to taskbar

As far as I know it will pin the access to .exe so, next time that you launch the app from the taskbar, then the default folder will be used instead of the folder specified in the batch file.



On the other side, same behaviour happens launching Palemoon-Portable.exe, pin to taskbar and launching from taskbar

next time profile will be loaded from \Users\dapgo\AppData\Roaming\Moonchild\Productions\Pale Moon


Fedor2 wrote:Any regular mozilla browser including Palemoon can launched in portable mode with two command line parameters: profile and no-remote

Code: Select all

C:\Palemoon\palemoon.exe -no-remote -profile C:\Palemoon\profile
profile parameter is obvious, no-remote is for not interacting with other, you can launch many browser instances simultaneously with different profiles.

So make a shortcut and pack with 7zsd_LZMA2 for example and thats all.
pcxFirefox is portable out of the box
there used so called temtutil, like palemoon-portanle.exe, but dll, so i sayd not out of the box.

Fedor2

Re: [Suggestion] Would it be possible to make a portable app?

Unread post by Fedor2 » 2018-01-31, 16:42

with 7zsd all works properly.

Now i have ready test portable version made from regular palemoon, if Moonchild does not object i shall share it.
Last edited by Fedor2 on 2018-01-31, 16:42, edited 1 time in total.

dapgo
Fanatic
Fanatic
Posts: 206
Joined: 2016-10-11, 11:36

Re: [Suggestion] Would it be possible to make a portable app?

Unread post by dapgo » 2018-10-26, 10:55

Hello @Fedor2
can you share more detail about this procedure?
What is 7zsd_LZMA2?

thanks
Fedor2 wrote:with 7zsd all works properly.

Now i have ready test portable version made from regular palemoon, if Moonchild does not object i shall share it.

Fedor2

Re: [Suggestion] Would it be possible to make a portable app?

Unread post by Fedor2 » 2018-10-27, 04:44

7zsd is a unpacker that can execute commands from text file. 7zsd_LZMA2 is custom build for LZMA2 or from the older versions do not recall, search the web, original can be found it inside https://www.7-zip.org/a/7z920_extra.7z
Make append on it special text file and 7z file, rename as exe file.
For this case put palemoon -profile -no-remote. You shall get fully portable, launch from anywhere.

But it creates empty Moonchild folder in the Appdata, to cancel need to patch and rebuild from source code.

dapgo
Fanatic
Fanatic
Posts: 206
Joined: 2016-10-11, 11:36

Re: [Suggestion] Would it be possible to make a portable app?

Unread post by dapgo » 2018-11-06, 17:50

other option is to generate the portable with winPenPack framework (same used by PM)
Instructions:
http://www.winpenpack.com/en/e107_plugi ... post_31904
http://www.winpenpack.com/main/download.php?view.966
Last edited by dapgo on 2018-11-06, 17:53, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
therube
Board Warrior
Board Warrior
Posts: 1650
Joined: 2018-06-08, 17:02

Re: [Suggestion] Would it be possible to make a portable app?

Unread post by therube » 2018-11-07, 16:45

C:\Palemoon\palemoon.exe -no-remote -profile C:\Palemoon\profile
That is not "quite" Portable.
At least that is not what one would typically consider a "portable app".

That is nothing more then then telling PM to open starting with a profile at some specific location.

Now a Profile opened with -profile is "kind of" self-contained, in that (virtually) all the Profile contents would be held within that specified location; so your bookmarks are there, as well as your /cache/ (& most all else). (A "regular" Profile would split things up between %appdata%/local/ & %appdata%/roaming/ ...)

PM is actually "installed" (or at least, unpacked), somewhere, outside of the specified -profile location.
And in that respect, (Windows) Registry is used. (Not sure if the actual portable version of PM uses the Registry or not?)


Anyhow, I use -profile all the time - but not for "portable" reasons.

Locked