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The distinction "portable" is mostly inapplicable for [[Apple Macintosh]] software, as many applications for [[Mac OS X]] are packaged as "drag-install" [[bundle (NEXTSTEP)|application bundles]] rather than as [[Installer (Mac OS X)|Installer]] packages. However, most Macintosh applications store their preferences in files in a directory under the user's [[home directory]] rather than the drive they are being run from; while it would be possible to configure an application to behave differently, this is uncommon. Portable Macintosh applications included in the below list store their preferences in the drive they are being run from.
The distinction "portable" is mostly inapplicable for [[Apple Macintosh]] software, as many applications for [[Mac OS X]] are packaged as "drag-install" [[bundle (NEXTSTEP)|application bundles]] rather than as [[Installer (Mac OS X)|Installer]] packages. However, most Macintosh applications store their preferences in files in a directory under the user's [[home directory]] rather than the drive they are being run from; while it would be possible to configure an application to behave differently, this is uncommon. Portable Macintosh applications included in the below list store their preferences in the drive they are being run from.


== Property of feature? ==
== Property, or feature? ==


For certain classes of [[software tools]] and [[utilities]], being fully portable is not only a convenient feature as much as a vital property, such as in the case of e.g. system/data recovery or diagnostic utilities, which have to be entirely stand-alone and self-sufficient when executed.
For certain classes of [[software tools]] and [[utilities]], being fully portable is not only a convenient feature as much as a vital property, such as in the case of e.g. system/data recovery or diagnostic utilities, which have to be entirely stand-alone and self-sufficient when executed.
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In the earlier days of home and personal computing, where software typically resided on and was executed from a single [[floppy disk]] (usually with only one program per disk) the concept of "portable application" was a property of the software itself, not something requiring specific engineering.
In the earlier days of home and personal computing, where software typically resided on and was executed from a single [[floppy disk]] (usually with only one program per disk) the concept of "portable application" was a property of the software itself, not something requiring specific engineering.


While entirely portable programs can still be designed today regardless of their size or complexity (with extreme cases being the so-called [[LiveDistro|LiveDistros]] containing whole operating systems such as [[Suse Linux]]), user demand for features such as easy uninstallation and integration with other programs menus made some kind of installation or at least "registering" with the operating system a necessity.
While entirely portable programs can still be designed today regardless of their size or complexity (with extreme cases being the so-called [[LiveDistro|LiveDistros]] containing whole operating systems such as [[Suse Linux]]), user demand for features such as easy uninstallation and integration with other programs' menus made some kind of installation or at least "registering" with the operating system a necessity.


Many older [[Windows 3.1]] applications, as well as some poorly designed [[MS-DOS]] ones fell somewhere halfway between the portable and unportable category, as "installation" was usually little more than a [[file copying]] operation in a specific [[directory]] (or even a floppy disk), but certain data was implicitly stored in the user's Windows directory or another arbitrary hardcoded directory, thus rendering the user settings non-portable, or at least not readily portable with the rest of the program.
Many older [[Windows 3.1]] applications, as well as some poorly designed [[MS-DOS]] ones, fell somewhere halfway between the portable and unportable category, as "installation" was usually little more than a [[file copying]] operation in a specific [[directory]] (or even a floppy disk), but certain data was implicitly stored in the user's Windows directory or another arbitrary hardcoded directory, thus rendering the user settings non-portable, or at least not readily portable with the rest of the program.


==See also==
==See also==

Revision as of 20:06, 17 November 2006

A USB drive, shown with a 24 mm US quarter coin for scale.

A portable application, or portable app for short, is a software program that does not require any kind of formal "installation" onto a computer's permanent storage device to be executed, and can be stored on a removable storage device such as a USB flash drive (or, in days gone by, on a floppy disk) and used on multiple computers. This does not mean that it can be taken and used on a different operating system, processing platform, or another computer with completely different hardware (i.e., those that are not compatible with the software as stated by its requirements), so it is not to be confused with the concept of software portability, which is the ability for software to be run or compiled with little modification on diverse computing platforms. Ideally it can be configured to read its configuration from the same location as the software.

The distinction "portable" is mostly inapplicable for Apple Macintosh software, as many applications for Mac OS X are packaged as "drag-install" application bundles rather than as Installer packages. However, most Macintosh applications store their preferences in files in a directory under the user's home directory rather than the drive they are being run from; while it would be possible to configure an application to behave differently, this is uncommon. Portable Macintosh applications included in the below list store their preferences in the drive they are being run from.

Property, or feature?

For certain classes of software tools and utilities, being fully portable is not only a convenient feature as much as a vital property, such as in the case of e.g. system/data recovery or diagnostic utilities, which have to be entirely stand-alone and self-sufficient when executed.

In the earlier days of home and personal computing, where software typically resided on and was executed from a single floppy disk (usually with only one program per disk) the concept of "portable application" was a property of the software itself, not something requiring specific engineering.

While entirely portable programs can still be designed today regardless of their size or complexity (with extreme cases being the so-called LiveDistros containing whole operating systems such as Suse Linux), user demand for features such as easy uninstallation and integration with other programs' menus made some kind of installation or at least "registering" with the operating system a necessity.

Many older Windows 3.1 applications, as well as some poorly designed MS-DOS ones, fell somewhere halfway between the portable and unportable category, as "installation" was usually little more than a file copying operation in a specific directory (or even a floppy disk), but certain data was implicitly stored in the user's Windows directory or another arbitrary hardcoded directory, thus rendering the user settings non-portable, or at least not readily portable with the rest of the program.

See also

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