A program for creating portable versions of programs from regular versions of programs that require installation on a computer.
A computer is an item that you practically cannot do without today. However, the PC itself is a bunch of hardware, which can only be made truly useful by skillfully selected software!
In essence, portable applications are the same programs that you are used to using in everyday life, but they are independent of the components of the system on which they are launched and do not require installation. Accordingly, we can run them on any computer from any storage medium (today, most often flash drives).
Advantages of portable software
- No installation required
- Runs from any media
- Does not depend on the components of the system on which it runs
- Does not clog the Windows registry
- Does not leave traces of its activities on the PC.
Not so long ago, portable versions of the required software could only be created manually on a “clean” or virtual OS. I had to take snapshots of the registry before and after installation, then compare them and (again manually) collect all the files and registry keys that had changed...
However, today there are applications that allow you to completely automate this long and tedious process! I would like to introduce you to the program Cameyo. At the moment, this is practically the only virtualization system of its kind that allows you to fully automate the process of building portable versions of any applications.
In terms of its capabilities, it competes with the commercial product of the SPOON company - SpoonStudio:
Comparison of the Cameyo program with the paid analogue Spoon Studio
As you can see, Cameyo is almost as good as an expensive commercial virtualization system. Moreover, if you do not want to delve into the intricacies of optimizing the resulting portable application, then Cameyo will be your best choice, since it offers step-by-step user support!
Spoon Studio also has this function, but in our free application the wizard interface is much more convenient, clearer and never implies a double interpretation!
Another advantage of Cameyo is its portability and size is quite small for a program in its category (only 6.7 MB - versus 88.7 MB for Spoon Studio).
Installing Cameyo
You can launch Cameyo directly from the archive that you downloaded.
Attention! Before starting Cameyo, it is advisable to disable the Internet and applications that work with it and with the PC file system! (this will allow you to minimize the initial size of the executable file of the portable application).
Cameyo interface
After launch, we will see a window with two buttons: “Capture installation” (which means “Capture the installation process”) and “Edit existing package” (“Edit existing packages”). Since we don’t have any finished projects yet, we click the first button and in the lower right corner of the screen we will see the following message:
The inscription in the window literally means “Obtaining an initial screenshot of the system before installation.” This is the first stage of creating our future portable application. Cameyo collects data about system components such as the registry, system folders and file structure within 3 to 5 minutes.
Creating a portable version of the program
Upon completion of the information collection stage, we move directly to the installation process of our application:
At this stage, we install the application we need and make all the necessary preliminary settings with it. Once the installation is complete, click the “Install done” button in the Cameyo window. If the program you installed requires a reboot, then you don’t need to press anything - feel free to reboot.
After confirming the completion of the installation, Cameyo will proceed to the third (and, in fact, the last) step - comparing system snapshots:
In the information window you will see that Cameyo is rescanning the system and searching for changed components. Once the difference between the system state before and after installing the application is identified, Cameyo will automatically create an executable file with a fully working portable version of the application you just installed!
Reducing the size of the created portable program
In principle, we achieved our goal - we created a workable portable version of the desired application... But not everything is so simple...
The fact is that most often we cannot guarantee that there are no applications running in the background on our PC that make changes to the file system. Therefore, the final size of the executable file of our portable program may be “excessive” :).
In order to avoid unnecessary components in the portable application we created, we will open it using the Cameyo Package Editor. To do this, let’s return to the main window again and now click the second button - “Edit existing package”. In the Explorer window that opens, indicate the portable application we created and get into the following window:
Before us is the Cameyo Package Editor. It consists of 4 tabs, on each of which we can perform some actions with our portable application. And the first tab that opens immediately when you launch the Editor is “General”. These are the general settings for our project. Here we can:
- specify the executable file of our application;
- application isolation mode (communication mode, fully isolated or fully accessible);
- specify the type of media from which the application can be launched;
- set an icon for the program;
- set the name and description of the application.
In the second tab (“Files”) we can manage the file system of our portable application:
It is here that we can minimize the size of the created program by removing all obviously unnecessary components. Also in this tab we can add the necessary files (for example, plugins) to our project.
Typically, deleted files and folders are not deleted immediately, but are only marked with a red cross. They will be deleted after saving the project. However, in practice I encountered some difficulties in this process.
Some files, it seems, are not deleted, but are only hidden, which does not in any way affect the size of the final executable file :(. Therefore, I repeat once again: when creating each new portable application, try to ensure that no third-party programs are running on your computer!
The third tab (“Registry”) allows you to edit the internal registry of the portable application:
Here, unnecessary branches are deleted without any problems, so we will not dwell on the process of cleaning the registry.
Fine-tuning of the portable program
The last tab (“Advanced”) provides some “advanced” project configuration functions:
These functions include:
- Prohibiting child processes
- Configuring settings for saving application settings (full saving, prohibiting saving the registry and completely clearing data when closing the application)
- Setting the application expiration date.
When you have made all the necessary changes, you will need to save our project. To do this, go to the “File” menu (upper left corner of the Package Editor window) and click the “Save” button.
The changes will be saved in the previously created executable file. If you want to experiment a little, you can click the “Save As” button and save the corrected project as a new file with a different name and different settings.
Advantages and disadvantages of Cameyo
- free :);
- full automation;
- simple interface;
- the ability to edit the created project;
- setting parameters of created applications.
- Problems with cleaning the project file system:(.
conclusions
If you always need to have several specific programs at hand for work, but you do not know how to make portable versions of them, then Cameyo is exactly the tool that will help you cope with your problem.
Moreover, Cameyo recently launched (and is now actively testing) an online program virtualization service. This unprecedented development can be found at: http://online.cameyo.com/submit.aspx.
Be mobile ;). Feel complete freedom of action with homemade portable software!
P.S. Permission is granted to freely copy and quote this article, provided that an open active link to the source is indicated and the authorship of Ruslan Tertyshny is preserved.
Today you will learn how to make portable programs yourself, easily and quickly. A free thing called Cameyo will help us in this matter.
Portable programs in a couple of clicks
First, I’ll very briefly remind you what kind of portable programs these are ( already described in detail). These are special versions of regular programs, only “packed” into one file. They do not need to be installed into the operating system, they do not leave “traces” in it after their work, and they can be freely moved from disk to disk or carried with you on a flash drive.
Recently, I prefer to place such programs in a high-speed ram disk(in the computer’s RAM), where they work as quickly as possible (my system SSD drive, at this time, nervously smokes on the sidelines, envying).
Cameyo copes with creating portable versions of programs in 95% of cases - the remaining 5%, for various reasons, cannot be “trained”.
For example, let’s make a portable version of the famous CCleaner cleaner - I personally will find it very useful for saving the computers of relatives and friends from “digital garbage” (“I’ll throw it” on a flash drive and carry it with me to technical assistance sessions).
How to make a portable program in Cameyo
So, first you need to prepare (download) the installer for the program that we will turn into portable.
In our case, this is CCleaner...
...select the middle item in the list, click “Ok” and wait a while for the program to take a snapshot of the system before installing the experimental software into it...
After such a window appears in the system tray area (near the clock)…
…we don’t poke anything in it , but simply begin (and complete) the usual installation of CCleaner on the Windows operating system. A flashing red ball strongly hints that all changes made to the system directories and its registry are being monitored.
Important! You need to apply tricky patches, Russifiers, change settings, put dots and checkboxes... you need to immediately after installing the program and only after that move on to the final stage of creating a portable version.
Click the “Install done” button in the Cameyo window and after a couple of minutes...
...we receive a notification with the address of the location of the finished, newly created portable program...
Let's go where the Cameyo program sent us...
…And move (cut) the folder with a portable version of the cleaner on a flash drive or another disk. As I said above, I personally “threw” it onto high-speed disk in RAM computer.
All that remains is to check the result - I launch the portable cleaner and use it to delete... its regular version, which you and I installed on the system drive (have you already forgotten about this?)...
...we don't need this one anymore extra program in the system partition (why do we need a blacksmith extra duplicates?).
This is how easy it is to make portable programs yourself in Cameyo.
Download Cameyo
The program size is 14.4 MB. Viruses and “useful” spy additional software it's not in it. As you noticed from the description above, it itself is also portable.
Everyone could already appreciate the convenience of Portable soft; many people like it more for some personal reasons.
But the most important reasons in my opinion:
? There is no need to install soft and thereby clog up the system and registry
? Ability to store and use Portable soft on an external flash drive
? Your Portable soft is always with you on a flash drive, and you can use it anywhere if you have USB ports on your computer
? Use at work where it is not desirable or impossible to install soft, or there are not enough resources for this
? Cheapness and sufficiently large capacity of flash drives on which you can store your favorite programs
Finding Portable versions of almost all popular programs is not very difficult now, but what to do if you use some rare or specific software? The answer suggests itself - do it yourself.
Let's look at the step-by-step creation of a portable version of the program Firefox 3.0.6
Download the program distribution from the offsite.
To create portable we need a program, we use it.
So, let's begin.
Unpack the program archive Thinstall Virtualization Suite to any folder. Run Setup capture.exe.
We take the first snapshot of the system before installing the program. Click Start. To create a portable, Thinstall compares snapshots of the system before and after installation.
We leave everything by default, scan drive C and all registry branches. Click Pre-install Scan.
The scanning process takes some time, wait for the following window to appear:
Do not close the window, minimize everything and proceed to installation Firefox.
Follow the instructions on the screen to complete the installation.
Launch and configure firefox.
That’s it, the program is installed and configured, we return to the previously hidden window and scan the system for changes with Thinstall. Click Post-install scan.
Select the main exe file that will launch the program:
Select Mozilla Firefox.exe and click Continue >>
All changes will be saved in the folder with the Thinstall program:
The changes have been saved, let's continue:
The folder with the program, all changes and the bat file is here:
C:\Thinstall Virtualization Suite 3.358 portable\Captures\Mozilla Firefox (3.0.6)\
Having finished cleaning, look at the changes in the registry in the following files:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER.txt
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.txt
HKEY_USERS.txt
And we delete from there everything that does not concern Firefox. We make sure that there are no extra spaces left - otherwise portable will not compile.
Section – responsible for file compression. Compression/decompression will consume system resources.
CompressionType=None
;CompressionType=Fast
Section – is responsible for isolating the program from the real environment. WriteCopy – means that all changes from the program will be saved in the program folder. Merged – all changes will remain in the system.
;DirectoryIsolationMode=WriteCopy
DirectoryIsolationMode=Merged
SandboxName – the name of the sandbox (container) – the name of the folder in which all changes from the created portable program will be saved. By default this is the folder C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Thinstall. By the way, if you already use portable programs, take a look at this folder - you will find a lot of garbage there - not very convenient.
Option SandboxPath specifies the path to create the Sandbox folder; usually this option is not present in the Package.ini file; by default, Sandbox is created in the C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Thinstall folder.
In order for Sandbox to be created in the folder with the portable program file, specify SandboxPath=. in the section, for example, immediately after the description of the SandboxPath option.
This is much more convenient than searching for these files in Documents and Settings.
And finally, the final action - run build.bat and get the portable program in the folder bin.
We test the obtained result for its “portability”. If necessary, return files and settings from a previously saved archive (Captures\Mozilla Firefox (3.0.6)\) and create portable again.
PS. It is best to conduct all your experiments on a “virgin” system, preferably a virtual machine (VMWare VirtualBox). The latest program is free. Building portable software on a virtual machine will allow you to avoid the unpleasant consequences of messing up your operating system and the less garbage there will be in your build.
Make your programs portable!
THERE ARE TWO WAYS:
1 .The simplest is using an archiver WinRAR.
2 .Using the program Thinstall Virtualization Suite.
Who cares?
Creating a portable computer in WinRAR.
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How to make a Portable program.
This is perhaps the easiest way from a regular application to make a portable version of a program that will run from a flash drive or other removable media, does not require any rights in the system and does not make changes to the system registry. A lot of portable software is created using Thinstall Virtualization. To begin with, take a “clean” system into which the application virtualization program Thinstall Virtualization Suite is installed. You can download the Russified version here:
Deposit
Letitbit
Rapida
direct link
Archive size 4.8MB
And so, we downloaded and installed it on a “clean” system. Now we run the Thinstall Virtualization program, select which disk to scan (usually C) and wait for the program to finish scanning the system. Thinstall Virtualization takes a snapshot of the system before installing the application that we will port.
After that, we install the program, a portable version of which we want to receive. We install the crack if necessary, enter the registration key, install if patches, cracks are required, and if a reboot is needed, reboot.
Without running the installed program in Thinstall Virtualization, click the “Next” button and scan the system a second time, and we see this window. We get a “snapshot” of the system after installing the ported program.
Click “Next” again, the program completes its work and closes. After that, we follow the path - My computer / drive C / Program Files / VMware North Star / Captures / Find the folder with the installed program, in it click on the file build.bat
We have another folder called bin, go into it and see our application already in Portable version.
It is worth noting that not all programs can be ported this way; for example, antiviruses will not work. From experience, I can say that out of 10 programs, 7-8 turn out to be quite functional.
So, try it. Good luck!
P.S Where to get a “clean” system. The free VirtualBox program can help you with this. A program for simultaneously running several virtual operating systems on a computer. VIRTUALBOX allows you to install and run several operating systems on one computer, including 64-bit ones. Here is one of Such guest systems can be used as “pure” ones only for the production of portable programs.
You can download it from the program website virtualbox.org or from the link below.
Direct link VIRTUALBOX
Who doesn't you can close immediately.
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INSTRUCTIONS (in English, but everything is clear...)
Porting the application using VMWare ThinApp
Many Windows applications can be made portable using VMware ThinApp, with the following exceptions:
Applications that require installation of device drivers are not supported. The application will work if the required drivers are pre-installed on the system;
Applications with hardware copy protection are not supported. ThinApp emulates only some hardware properties (for example, device serial numbers; emulation of ethernet MAC address, CPUID, and other properties is not supported).
To port we need 3 things:
1. VMWare ThinApp itself (there is a paid and free version)
2. What we will dissect
3. A computer on which the program from step 2 was not installed
In general, the manual recommends that all operations for porting certain programs be done on a “bare” virtual machine, so that after the process is completed, you can roll back the virtual machine to a snapshot taken in advance, thereby again obtaining a clean, uncluttered axis.
As a test subject, I chose the fast and free defragmenter Auslogics Disk Defrag. Whether you consider this an advertisement or not is your right; I am pleased with its speed of operation, compared to the standard Windows one. (Actually, Auslogics previously published 2 versions of the defrager, already ported and with an installer, now something installable)
And so, let's begin the process. The whole process can be divided into several stages.
1. Launch ThinApp and perform an initial system scan. In this case, it is recommended to turn off antivirus software to avoid garbage access to the disk by third-party programs. More on this below.
2. Installation of the target program and its configuration (configuration for maximum clarification of the system paths used).
3. Re-scan the system for changes after step 2
4. A little tweaking of the project before the final build
5. Building the application.
As you can see, there is nothing tricky. Well, before starting, it’s worth dwelling on point 1 and point 2 in more detail.
Point 2 - Why configure the program if it can be done later? The fact is that when setting up programs, they really like to save their data in the most secret corners of the operating system, of which the latter has plenty. So, not all programmers make sure that during installation all the necessary paths for their brainchild are created. Accordingly, when you port a program that is initially destined to work only after being installed on the system, it may not create all the paths it needs for subsequent work. Naturally, VMWare also does not have telepathy and cannot predict everything in the world. In short, at the end we get a program that seems to be ported in all respects, but with missing paths. There are at least a couple of ways the situation could develop. Firstly, all the settings are saved along standard paths on the computer where the initial setup of our program takes place, secondly, a mountain of errors begins to pour in and everything turns into a glitchy hell. So it goes.
Accordingly, we select that hard drive/flash drive/floppy disk/punched card or where do you place the test subject? Select all the registry sections that are located under the media selection window at once - it won’t get any worse.
Click OK and boldly press on Prescan.
Cameyo program.
More recently, at the link,
I introduced you to the excellent Portableapps application. This application is a convenient shell for downloading and running ready-made (created in the Portableapps community) portable versions of programs.
Information for those who do not know what portable versions of programs are. Portable versions of programs do not require installation on a computer. They can be put into operation immediately.
But what to do if the program you need is not on the Portableapps website? Create a portable version of the program you need yourself! And what will help us with this is perhaps the simplest in this category, a free program called Cameyo. Using this application, you can easily create a portable version of any program, after which you can transfer it to a flash drive or to your cloud file storage. By the way, the Cameyo program has its own cloud service for creating and storing portable versions of programs, but a free account allows you to create only 3 programs per month, frankly speaking, not a lot, so let’s consider the issue of creating portable versions of programs directly, on your computer. There are no restrictions here.
The program does not require installation; it is essentially an application for connecting to the Cameyo service.
Select to start the program.
When you first start, you need to go through a simple registration.
Do not close the Cameyo program window!
After registration, you will receive a letter to your specified email address with a link to the registration confirmation page. Let's move along it.
Fill out the login form (login, which is your email address and the password you created during registration).
After successful registration, a window will appear on your desktop confirming successful activation and logging into the program under your name.
In the program window, select the option to create a portable program locally.
Cameyo will take a snapshot of your operating system and remember all currently installed programs. This process is quite lengthy. Be patient.
After the process is completed, a window like this will appear.
There is no need to do anything with it for now.
Now we download the program from the Internet, the one from which you decided to create a portable version. In my example, I download and install the Mozilla browser on my computer (the installed program can be deleted later).
Now, only after installing the program you need, click the “Install done” button.
The Cameyo program will again scan your computer for installed programs, determine that a NEW program is installed (in our case, the Mozilla browser) and automatically create a portable version of it.