›

Portable Processing on a flash drive or thumb stick

jeremydouglassjeremydouglass
edited April 2018 in Using Processing

Is anybody currently running Processing on e.g. a USB flash drive / thumb drive / stick, and are there any guides to setting up a portable system?

I am working with a team of people using institutional laptops, and I am interested in setting up Processing 3.3.7+ with a specific configuration on flash drives (e.g. with Python mode and with certain libraries already installed).

A cross-platform setup would be nice, although if it could only work on macOS machines that would be fine as well.

I have found old discussions of this:

...and old open issues:

Sharing advice or past experience with this would be appreciated.

Tagged:

Comments

  • kfrajerkfrajer

    Interesting. Do you think you could open a ticket and suggest this as a feature? I can think of some permissions that needs to be considered before attempting this and possibly sacrifice the multi-user feature when running this portable version?

    If you open the ticket, there is a chance somebody in the community takes over this challenge in the long run. I can think that to implement this you will need to consider:

    • Verifying availability of needed resources (JRE, Python libs) assuming they are not in the stick
    • Temporal folder to store and run unnamed sketches
    • Sketchfolder location needs to be carefully defined (could this be as simple as pointing this folder to the folder containing the Processing executable file when choosing the "portable" mode?
    • Then there is all the internet checkings... enough permissions available from mem stick? Or maybe disable this feature in the PV? (PV:=Portable version)

    In the meantime, I could suggest as a solution (untested, more of a thought) to use a VM. The first step would be to research and see if you can run a defined VM from a mem stick. If possible then it will be worth to try. Not experienced in macs but I believe they cn run VM easily... do they come with Virtual Box?

    My first attempt: can a virtual machine be run from a mem stick?

    Kf

  • BirdBird
    edited April 2018

    Well, I use Processing all the time from a USB on a PC. If Processing is not installed on the PC itself, then it tends to find everything on the USB fine. I have also used PortableApps, but also only on a PC and for Blender. I always thought it would be nice to have Processing configured for it too, but never felt inclined to do it. It does say that it has compatibility using Wine or CrossOver for Linux and Mac.

  • jeremydouglassjeremydouglass

    @Bird -- how does that work with contributions / libraries / modes?

    For example, do you have to reinstall Libraries (like PeasyCam) or modes (like Python Mode) each time that you use a new computer with the stick, or do you have it configured somehow to keep everything on the USB stick so that the installed libraries and modes are maintained on a new system?

    best, Jeremy

  • BirdBird

    @jeremydouglass I have a folder on the USB that I set in Processing to be the Sketch folder. I think what I have done in the past is copy the Processing Sketch folder from an instance in which Processing was actually installed on a computer. Then all the libraries, tools, etc travel with Processing. Does that make sense? I'm guessing that you could have multiple Processing platforms on one USB and they could all reference the same Sketch folder on the USB. I don't see why that wouldn't work, but I haven't tried it.

Sign In or Register to comment.