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Portable versions of development tools

portabledevapps.net

82 pointsedukodo38 comments

There's a lot of value in remotely accessible or portable tools. When I was in secondary school I began my experiments with Java using the JXXX compiler service (still available many years later at https://www.innovation.ch/java/java_compile.html). The school didn't allow running executables on the version of Windows used at the time (Windows 7 I believe), but permitted running any kind of JARs (as long as they had the appropriate Manifest to launch without needing access to a command line).

Without access to a service like this it's quite feasible that my entire life path would have changed and I am filled with eternal gratitude that people exist out there who are willing to provide such services.

> but permitted running any kind of JARs (as long as they had the appropriate Manifest to launch without needing access to a command line).

Heh, sounds like an opportunity for

    Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd.exe");

Very silly question : I'm used to "portable" as applied to code (meaning it does not need a lot of changes to be run on different architecture) ; and in French, "portable" is the colloquial term for "mobile phone". But what does "portable" mean in this context ?

not requiring installation. (meaning you can bring a USB drive full of useful tools with you and use on random PCs)

for clarification, as you know for sure, but others maybe don't: ... and keeping all the settings on the USB drive too.

//edit: typo

Good point! Yes, the expectation for a "portable" program is to run entirely out of its current folder, not requiring or leaving files elsewhere, my answer didn't cover that.

An ideal portable app for me also does not require admin to run.

> not requiring installation

It's a strange quirk of Windows that when you install a new piece of software, it will ask you in the wizard where you want to store it (C: drive or D: drive). D: is usually an external hard-drive, and so I select that. But the D: drive can magically become the E: drive in some cases when you have other media inserted like an SD card. So this is why I prefer portability since the path is agnostic and portable software doesn't care about drive letters.

tip: IIRC you can set partitions to specific "folders" rather than drive letters by using Windows' Disk Management tool.

Yes, as Mount Points. When you partition and format storage in Disk Management, it asks you what drive letter you want to assign, and that dialog has the option to alternatively specify a folder on an existing disk instead.

Carry your flash storage to each of the PCs you may come across throughout your day.

How do you deal with PCs that have disabled USB drives ?

https://winpython.github.io/ has portable packages of many python versions and each official release has embeddable package which requires no installation ( but does not come with pip, and once you install pip there, it kinda stops being portable as that pip will always point to the location it was initially installed).

We don't have this problem with Python Portable from portabledevapps.

Note that 3.9 is the first release to not work on Windows 7 anymore, which is still rather widespread. At the same time, to the end user, it offers very little over 3.8.

So, Portable Python 3.8 would be a good idea, non ? An 3.4 for XP ? XP still exists ?

Yes, I think it would make sense to provide a kit based on 3.8 instead, which does constitute a big enough improvement over 3.4 to drop some platforms, while remaining in support for years to come. For workstation use, I suppose XP is dead now—one may certainly hope so...

Some Googling suggests some 25M Windows XP users as of Sep 2020. Also see: https://www.quora.com/Is-using-Windows-XP-in-2020-still-a-go...

While that could certainly be true, these examples are all environments where running anything but mission critical legacy software (heaven forbid unofficial apps off the internet) wouldn't be acceptable anyway.

Kind of a tangent (and not an XP user!), but who defines mission-critical? Why can't normal people have things that they consider mission-critical? If my machine updates and crashes or breaks some program, and it prevents me from being able to do my job, or prevents my small business from running, it's OK because I'm just a random nobody and the machine isn't mission-critical because... why exactly? Is it not critical the mission of supporting my family and paying my bills? Only if it's a Large Company with millions of dollars to lose then it gets blessed as mission-critical? Whose mission is critical here exactly?

Anyone is welcome to consider their system mission critical, and if so, they should act accordingly, i.e. choose control and safety over convenience. Portable apps such as this one have no place there.

My point was: keeping support for Windows 7 at the cost of basically nothing seems sensible for now. That leaving some niche of Windows XP, Windows 98 or MS-DOS users does not change the balance. Few still use these platforms to begin with, and even fewer would benefit from a portable Python app.

> but who defines mission-critical?

Well, each user, so you are well within your rights to define any of your systems as mission-critical, if that's how you consider them.

There is no Council of Critical Missions that needs to evaluate applications. :)

> while remaining in support for years to come.

Python 3.8 has already reached the point where it’s only receiving security updates - not other bug fixes.

While both 7 and XP are out of support, 7 has significantly more marketshare than XP and is still used by many people.

Windows 7 is covered by paid Extended Support Updates (ESU) till Feb 2023 even.

Or even over 3.7. The next exciting release is 3.10, which features pattern matching, union litterals, and above all, way, wayyy better error messages

There's a much bigger list here that covers other categories of software: https://portapps.io/apps/

Only learning about Brave portable now: https://portapps.io/app/brave-portable/

Btw, we should say Portable Python or Python Portable ?

Is Spyder the best IDE ? Is there any other alternative ? Free and open source ?

The community edition of PyCharm is pretty widely regarded. VSCode is also pretty good but I would say it's more of an impressive text editor than an IDE.

What about Atom ?

Slow

update: ah, great minds think alike, I guess: https://github.com/portapps/intellij-idea-community-portable... although there's no obvious reference to PyCharm, I'd bet $1 it would work the same

---

While I haven't personally tried it, I bet by setting "IDEA_PROPERTIES=%CD%\portable.properties" and then:

    idea.config.path=./portable-config
    idea.system.path=./portable-system
    idea.plugins.path=./portable-plugins
    idea.log.path=./portable-log

there's a reasonable chance PyCharm (and, as the values imply, IJ) would run portably, too

I use those overrides when trying to isolate my copy of IJ for reporting bugs, but I don't recall if they work _exactly_ the same for PyCharm, and for sure I haven't confirmed that setting them prevents writing into other directories

It's a 64 bits version. Does anyone still use a 32 bits machine ?

Due to incompetent IT staff, I know for a fact that the school I used to go to has 64-bit i5 processors, but the OS installed on them is Windows 10 32-bit, lol

with only 4GB RAM :)

Under Windows, if you have some legacy 16-bit application from the dawn of time, you can run it on Windows 10 32-bit, but not on Windows 10 64-bit.

It's surprising how much industrial equipment is still controlled by 30 year old applications.

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