Feature request: Fully portable mode

[nstohler]

What I mean by "fully portable":

My expectation is that I have to go through the setup phase once, then create my own distribution so that I can use exactly the same setup easily during the usage phase on any machine where I want to analyze logs.

Setup phase:

• I extract the the LogExpert files to C:\Tools\LogExpert
• I add my own columnizer plugins to the plugins subfolder
• I start LogExpert
• [optional:] I import settings I created on a previous LogExpert installation
• I configure everything
  • highlighting
  • saved filters
  • file to columnizer associations, file to highlighting associations, etc

The expectation is that all of the above changes and configurations are persisted in C:\Tools\LogExpert.

Distribution phase

I zip C:\Tools\LogExpert and unzip it on remote machines/include it with my software distribution on test systems, or share it with my team members.

Usage phase:

I just start LogExpert wherever I unzipped it and don't have to care about configuring it again.

[Hirogen]

hmm this should already be possible, with portable.
There are currently 2 Bugs, that need to be fixed => #228 and that the sessions are not stored within the own folder in portable mode

[nstohler]

Thanks, so this should work in the latest CI-Build, or also in the stable release?
I will try it out and report back here.

[nstohler]

It works.

I tried it with the latest CI-Build (1.8.374) .

The following steps were required:

• Tools > Configure > Persistence > ✅ Activate Portable Mode
• Setup everything and exit LogExpert
  • in the LogExpert app folder, you should get portableMode.dat and settings.dat
• %appdata%\LogExpert contents can now be deleted (it will be recreated for logfiles)
• the LogExpert app folder can now be zipped and distributed as it was set up.

PS:
The "Activate Portable Mode" was a bit misleading for me, since it's inside the "persistence file location box". Maybe it's better to have it somewhere else and provide a better description?

[nstohler]

...I just noticed that if I customize the RegEx columnizers, those get still saved and loaded from %appdata%\LogExpert only. I tried moving those to the LogExpert app dir, but then they are not loaded.

[Hirogen]

persistence files (sessions), should now be saved in the startup directory, if portable mode is selected

[Hirogen]

The "Activate Portable Mode" was a bit misleading for me, since it's inside the "persistence file location box". Maybe it's better to have it somewhere else and provide a better description?

this has been fixed with #234 and is now outside of the persistence file checkboxes.
in #234 only session files are saved in the application startup, customized regex columnizers are done extra