Make portable TC fully compatible with PortableApps

[Moriarty]

Hello!
May I suggest to add an option to the tc2usb tool to make the resulting portable installation fully compatible with PortableApps by adding the necessary folders, icons and ini-files?
Right now it can be added manually which is difficult because of the various exe-files needed by TC or a somewhat unofficial version which is not updated through the regular PortableApps repositories can be used.
Thanks for listening!
Moriarty

[Horst.Epp]

There is no need for tc2usb or any portable apps compatibility.
If you have UseIniInProgramDir=7 in your Wincmd.ini
and your plugins are installed with %COMMANDER_PATH% as base.
You can simply copy the TC tree onto any other drive or place and it will work.
I'm doing that all the time.

[Moriarty]

Hello!
Thanks for the reply. I know that TC can be made portable, though I did not know the way avoiding tc2usb.
But that was not the point I wanted to make with my post: as you might know PortableApps offers a kind of startmenu for the apps created for it. But this requires some special folders and ini-files. To get that done without problems I suggested that tc2usb should offer an option to add these files when creating a portable installation so that TC is not simply portable but interacts with portable apps smoothly.

[DRP535]

There is no need for tc2usb or any portable apps compatibility.
If you have UseIniInProgramDir=7 in your Wincmd.ini
and your plugins are installed with %COMMANDER_PATH% as base.
You can simply copy the TC tree onto any other drive or place and it will work.
I'm doing that all the time.

Is it really this simple? I need to use TC on my work computer which is unfortunately completely locked down with no Admin rights, no registry access, no protected folder access, no access to safe mode booting, no USB port access, encrypted with BitLocker, passwords for everything, a massively over-aggressive Trend Micro anti-virus that blocks almost anything running the IT department didn't put there and no chance of requesting any of the passwords to undo any of this rubbish.

The only way I've been able to get TC to run in this environment is to find and use an unofficial repacked .PAF version someone else made and run it from the Documents folder of my user profile (one of the very few locations on the computer I actually have access to). Even then, Trend Micro blocks and crashes it when I try to do too many file movements it thinks are the actions of malware, but that's another issue.

Is there a much simpler way where I can just transfer exactly the setup from my home computer to the work one?

[petermad]

2DRP535

Is there a much simpler way where I can just transfer exactly the setup from my home computer to the work one?

That depends on which directory you have installed TC to on your home computer?

[boos.be]

There is a test version on the portableapps site at:
https://portableapps.com/node/57407

[karlchen]

Hello, Moriarty. Hello, boos.be.

About the request: Make portable TC fully compatible with PortableApps

As far as I understand the strength of PortableApps is making applications portable, which by design are not portable. Great.
Total Commander by design already is fully portable. - Even tc2usb is not really needed to get a portable T.C. installation. - So what is the benefit of adding all the extra stuff to Total Commander or to TC2USB, which PortableApps would need in order to make an application portable, which already is portable?
I fail to see any benefit.

Best regards,
Karl

[ghisler(Author)]

My tc2usb tool already supports portableapps - it looks for folder named "PortableApps" on the chosen drive, and suggests to copy the installation to PortableApps\Total Commander. Howver, I added this a few years ago, so it may not work with today's Portable Apps.

[DRP535]

2DRP535

Is there a much simpler way where I can just transfer exactly the setup from my home computer to the work one?

That depends on which directory you have installed TC to on your home computer?

I guess that's my problem. Because of the vastly different security setups between my private home computer (W7Pro Ultimate with full access rights to everything operated as Admin) and my work computer (W10 simple user with no rights to anything and completely locked down admin by corporate IT), I cannot have anything like the same installation directory.

Is there a simple way of transferring my home computer installation to my work computer and manually editing/updating all the expected location directories in the INI files to suit, keeping in mind I have no registry editing access to my work computer at all?

I would prefer to not have to resort to the repacked PAF installation version if possible. It makes for an extremely messy installation directory structure which is not logically easy to understand by a human making customization for things like plug-ins and INI files harder to do when there are multiple copies in various folders spread all around the computer in various locations to deal with. I would much prefer a replica of my home computer installation where I have everything located in a single installation folder and logical tree structure.

[Stefan2]

...
Is there a simple way of transferring my home computer installation to my work computer and manually editing/updating all the expected location directories in the INI files to suit, keeping in mind I have no registry editing access to my work computer at all?
...

Please see if that helps:

FAQs: Total Commander is fully portable / UseIniInProgramDir=7
https://www.ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=41760&p=292844#p292844




 

[petermad]

2DRP535

Is there a simple way of transferring my home computer installation to my work computer and manually editing/updating all the expected location directories in the INI files to suit, keeping in mind I have no registry editing access to my work computer at all?

I can answer that, but to make it easy for me and you I need to know the location of your ini-files - you can see that via the Menu: Help -> About Total Commander, the last two lines show te loction of your ini files. The Help item in the Menu is to the far right in the menu (some people never noticed it there).

If your ini-files are in "c:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\GHISLER\" - you don't have to reveal the username.

[DRP535]

On my home computer I have everything including the INI files installed in the program folder which is conventionally enough: C:\Program Files\Total Commander

On my work computer I am currently using the PAF installed version of 9.22a which has put the INI files (no user option given) into: c:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\GHISLER\ as you assumed above, which is not to my preference. The installation directory of the program itself is: C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\TotalCommanderPortable\App\totalcmd

[petermad]

2DRP535
The problem with having TC installed in C:\Program Files\Total Commander\ is that you usually don't have write permission to files in C:\Program Files\ hence TC and its plugins cannot write to for example ini files, unless you explicitly give either writing permission to the C:\Program Files\Total Commander\ folder or to each individual ini file. That is why ini files are usually kept in the c:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\GHISLER\ folder if TC is installed in either c:\Program Files\ or in c:\Program Files (x86)\.

I Recommend that you move all content including subdirectories from C:\Program Files\Total Commander\ to for example c:\totalcmd and then you put the line
UseIniInProgramDir=7 in the [Configuration] section of your wincmd.ini file (if it is not already there). You will have write permission to files in c:\totalcmd

Then you should replace any occurence of C:\Program Files\Total Commander\ whith %COMMANDER_PATH%\ in any ini file (also ini files for plugins).

Now you can copy c:\totalcmd and all subdirectories to a USB drive and run it from there, and you can copy the totalcmd directory to your work computer either to c:\totalcmd (recommended) or to any directory under C:\Users\USERNAME\ in case you are not allowed to make directories in the root of drive C: at your work computer.

The above assumes that your plugins are installed in subdirectories under the program directory of TC, most likely C:\Program Files\Total Commander\PLUGINS\ - if not you will have to reinstall your plugins.

[DRP535]

Thank you very much Peter. I'm going to do as you suggest and put the new copy of TC on my work computer into the root directory when I get back to my home computer in a couple of days. I'm working away on site right now and can't risk ruining the working TC installation I do have at the moment, so I'll tackle this at home when I have the luxury of time to correct any mistakes I make along the way. Thank you for your time and patience in explaining all this so thoroughly. I shall report back if I am successful in getting this to work. It will be a far preferable solution to have a replicated installation file structure across both my home and work computer lives, rather than this hideous mess of a dog's breakfast installation the PAF installer does.

[Starf0x]

Why don't you have a look at: http://www.svs4all.com/tcmd-portabke
It is an executable that makes your Total Commander Portable without 'Portable Apps'
I use it for years now.

Cheers, Starf0x