Portable OpenCPN
The OpenCPN portable option allows the program to run fron an USB stick or run independent and parallell to a normal installation.
To differ between various instances of the program, the titlebar on portable versions looks like this.
It is thus possible to run multiple portable instances and identify each version.
The following files/directories/folders must be in the directory containing the OpenCPN executable:
1. OpenCPN.exe (of course)
2. "opencpn portable.bat" (or other name of user choice)
A MSDOS batch file containing the one line:
"opencpn -p"
3. msvcr100.dll
4. msvcp100.dll
5. Seven wxWidgets dlls
6. OCPN data directories
plugins/
s57data/
share/
sounds/
tcdata/
wvsdata/
doc/
7. license.txt
To run OpenCPN portably within this directory, simply execute the "opencpn portable" batch file. There may be a way to build a clickable shortcut to OpenCPN, with the -p option specified in the shortcut. But I could not figure it out. Windows insists upon a drive letter in the command line of the shortcut, which would defeat the whole purpose of portability.
Thus, the batch file....
I find that this works pretty well from a USB stick...
On linux, a similar functionality exists.
Copy the opencpn executable binary and the data directories mentioned above to a local directory.
In that directory, do
$ ./opencpn -p
This will cause all user data files to be created and used from within that local directory.
This can be useful for side-by-side testing...
To differ between various instances of the program, the titlebar on portable versions looks like this.
It is thus possible to run multiple portable instances and identify each version.
To create a portable Windows version
The following files/directories/folders must be in the directory containing the OpenCPN executable:
1. OpenCPN.exe (of course)
2. "opencpn portable.bat" (or other name of user choice)
A MSDOS batch file containing the one line:
"opencpn -p"
3. msvcr100.dll
4. msvcp100.dll
5. Seven wxWidgets dlls
6. OCPN data directories
plugins/
s57data/
share/
sounds/
tcdata/
wvsdata/
doc/
7. license.txt
To run OpenCPN portably within this directory, simply execute the "opencpn portable" batch file. There may be a way to build a clickable shortcut to OpenCPN, with the -p option specified in the shortcut. But I could not figure it out. Windows insists upon a drive letter in the command line of the shortcut, which would defeat the whole purpose of portability.
Thus, the batch file....
I find that this works pretty well from a USB stick...
A Linux version
On linux, a similar functionality exists.
Copy the opencpn executable binary and the data directories mentioned above to a local directory.
In that directory, do
$ ./opencpn -p
This will cause all user data files to be created and used from within that local directory.
This can be useful for side-by-side testing...