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Redistribute a portable copy of Rainmeter?

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theimmersion
Posts: 55
Joined: November 27th, 2016, 1:51 pm

Redistribute a portable copy of Rainmeter?

Post by theimmersion »

Could i redistribute a portable rainmeter version?

I couldnt find any relevant info on this subject (probably missed it) and tried to read and understand the GNU license but im scitterish in such regards and rather have a outright yes or no answer.

I made a managment program and it uses RocketDock (can be redist according to its license) as a launcher bar (duh) and Rainmeter as part of the customization (essentially, everything else good looking). The idea is that a user starts my program and it gives some features the user can choose from to manage its PC.
Rainmeter essentially gives the GUI with added bonus of per user customization. The redist would only contain some base skins i made that act as the managment gui and the rest is up to the users to customize everything else, as normally would.
No changes are made to core rainmeter otherwise.
I thought it would be better than to have the user install rainmeter in order to work. Tho, im in the middle of adding checks to see if a user does have rainmeter installed and use that instead of the shipped one of course.
Also, the main reason is because that way, its already pre-configured to work from a flash drive or anywhere on PC.

I can send a PM of the files for inspection to devs if needed. Never done something like this so apology for some noob questions here. xD
Just wanna make sure i obey the rules.
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jsmorley
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Joined: April 19th, 2009, 11:02 pm
Location: Fort Hunt, Virginia, USA

Re: Redistribute a portable copy of Rainmeter?

Post by jsmorley »

You certainly can do that, but we don't recommend it. We like people to only get Rainmeter from our main site, where they have assurances that the installer can be trusted, and that it is the latest version. While nothing is stopping you from "bundling" Rainmeter with something else, it's not our favorite thing. Having someone get an out-of-date version of Rainmeter automatically installed on their system is unfortunate.
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theimmersion
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Joined: November 27th, 2016, 1:51 pm

Re: Redistribute a portable copy of Rainmeter?

Post by theimmersion »

Nothing is being installed and user installed version takes priority of course but i dont want to make the user manually make portable versions by themselves. The focus was portability. Your own system on any PC, so to speak.

The goal here is, plug flash drive in and it works. Thats only way i could achieve this tho.

Id like if i could somehow check the latest version online and ask user to download a zip with portable rainmeter files and than just point my app to the downloaded zip and it would update automatically (replace files). That would be easy and safe. But instead, i planned to update it myself for the time being. Is there somewhere where i could maybe request this? Would it be ok to have a download link for a portable.zip? In that case would need both final and release candidate. I mostly use release candidate versions tho.

I do want the best for the user so any suggestions on how to go about this is appreciated.
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jsmorley
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Joined: April 19th, 2009, 11:02 pm
Location: Fort Hunt, Virginia, USA

Re: Redistribute a portable copy of Rainmeter?

Post by jsmorley »

I don't really have any suggestions, as this whole idea is one which we don't go out of our way to support. There are no .zip versions, (you would need both 32bit and 64bit portable installs, and need to determine which to use) only the single installer that can install either the normal or portable versions. There is no longer any way to silently install Rainmeter from the command line.

You can include your own .zip versions of the latest install of Rainmeter, and somehow determine if they need 32bit or 64bit and unzip the right one to some folder on their hard drive. That's about the only thing I can think of.
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theimmersion
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Joined: November 27th, 2016, 1:51 pm

Re: Redistribute a portable copy of Rainmeter?

Post by theimmersion »

Apology if i express my self wrongly. I do not request any support or anything. Not directly anyway.
Im just saying it would be nice to have some links to zip files of portable versions both 64 and 32 either as separate downloads or bundled in separate folders. My app updates both 32 and 64 bits files and starts the one accordingly.

My app and its structure:
PC UTILITY\PC UTILITY LAUNCHER.exe
PC UTILITY\Addons\Rainmeter\Rainmeter 64\Rainmeter.exe
PC UTILITY\Addons\Rainmeter\Rainmeter 32\Rainmeter.exe

My launcher would check on startup if new version is available and ask user to download the zip file or files.
If user clicks yes, my app just opes the link with default browser.
Otherwise it would start rainmeter based on 32 or 64 bit system.
In the gui provided by my app, user can click update rainmeter and a file select window pops up and user just points it to the zip files. My app would than simply replace the files for new ones. So there is no support from rainmeter needed and at same time is downloading from official site.

So all i need is for the rainmeter team to consider perhaps adding some side links to portable files in zip. Ill do the rest. For user convenience while downloading and also later updating, i think it would be good to have one zip with 32 and 64 versions in folders. Please... *puppy eyes*
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jsmorley
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Joined: April 19th, 2009, 11:02 pm
Location: Fort Hunt, Virginia, USA

Re: Redistribute a portable copy of Rainmeter?

Post by jsmorley »

Sorry, but this is quite unlikely. The overhead in work to create separate folders with the 32bit and 64bit versions of releases and zip them up would be quite high, and its not something we think the overall community needs.