Can Blitz3d/BlitzMax be made portable

Hey there, Just wondered if anyone has done this, in purebasic you have a portable option, so you can put the whole program on a usb stick, use the /portable flag when launching the IDE, and it saves all entries within the usb stick. I just wondered if anyone has done the same on Blitz3d or Blitzmax and is running of a usb stick

Kind regards

afaik a blitz compiled exe's been proved to work on a usb stick as it required no installation, registry checks etc just paths for the media to be in the right place

the ide however ive no idea, try it

You should just be able to copy the folder for Blitz3D or BlitzMax onto your USB drive -- I generally reinstall this way on a new Windows setup. Both IDEs' settings are stored in their local folders anyway.

The only obvious exception I can see might be if you build modules in BlitzMax, or do anything else that's dependent on the optional MinGW installation, or use a 3rd-party IDE which isn't also portable.

Anyone tried this with Bmax? (MingW portable)
http://portableapps.com/node/4142
[EDIT: nevermind - broken link]

i use BlitzMax on a portable drive all the time. i can just plug into whatever PC is nearby when i get a chance to program. basically for me two things are required, BlitzMax and MingW. i have a BAT file that sets the paths required for MingW and then launches BlitzMax. settings for BlitzMax are stored within the cfg subdir so they go with me to. i also have BATs that build the mods i work with. they set the paths for MingW and call the build command piping the output to a log file for review.

Yup. Even better if you have a pendrivve with a little bit of extra space, you can install something like DSL (Damn Small Linux), and get an entire portable work environment, regardless of which computer you're using it on, providing it can boot from USB.

Nice one, Many thanks for your response on this, great news :)

yep

Sorry to resurrect this thread again, hope everyone had a good XMAS :-), I'm still trying to get Blitzmax working on USB Stick, it works out of the box compiling, however if you had any 3rd party modules, then you need the C++ MINGW compiler, so I thought about GMAN respond with batch files, however I'm coming up with a logical issue, in that, what happens if you don't know the drive names, is there something in a bat file you can put saying to find what the drive name is, or I thought about doing it this way:

set MINGDIR="..\mingw"
path="..\mingw\bin""
MaxIDE.exe

However for CTRL+D that doesn't work :(

Any help file, or could someone post what their batch file would be on the USB stick

Many thanks

Kind Regards

@nrasool have a look at this and see if it helps
http://www.computing.net/answers/windows-nt/batch-usb-disks-and-usb-drives/22339.html

You can use the HP tool to make a bootable USB stick, and then you can install any OS on the USB stick and boot from it. Best works of course a Linux Live version, like Knoppix which autodetects any hardware very well.

Then you can take your USB stick with Knoppix and Blitz3D/Max to any Intel PC and boot it up.

greetings :) here is my BAT for running BlitzMax with MingW. MingW is installed at the same level as BlitzMax in a directory called "MingW". this BAT resides in the same directory as maxide.exe. %CD% is the current directory.

@setlocal
@set path=%path%;%CD%\bin;%CD%\..\MingW\bin;
@set MINGW=%CD%\..\MingW
maxide.exe
@endlocal

hope this helps :)

gman:
Do you know how long will the changes to environmental variables made with @set last? Should it still work, if I use "start maxide", which lets the command prompt close.

gman, Many thanks for the batch file, it is working perfectly now!!! :-)

@Otus - it lasts only for the run of the command window. i dont know of a way for it to stick when the command window closes other than actually making the changes in the users env settings.

@nrasool - glad i could help :)

like with setx.