Portable should not write to Appdata

[reefhound]

Perhaps there is a setting or config file I'm missing? I think a portable version should store all settings in a subfolder of the executable. If I'm running off a USB device I want all the data on the USB device. It would make it easier to store in a repo. It seems to currently write to user's Appdata\Roaming\Bruno folder. I've tried versions 1.38 and 2.01.

[anusree-bruno]

Thanks for the feedback, @reefhound! This isn’t possible at the moment, but we’re considering adding an option for users to set a custom preferences path. Would that help with your use case?

[reefhound]

Why is it not possible? Technological constraints, budget constraints, lack of developers? Because it would seem rather easy to me to look for a settings or config file in the executing directory for custom location of AppData.

I'm effectively doing that now as a workaround. I have a batch file to open command shell, create Appdata\Roaming\Bruno as subfolders within the executing folder, then repoint all Appdata environment variables. Seems to work though I just did it this weekend and it hasn't been tested heavily. You also seem to write to Appdata\Local but I don't care about the updater for a portable.

What I want is for a portable app to actually be portable. If I have Bruno Portable on a usb, I want to be able to plug it into laptop A or laptop B or laptop C and have all my collections and environments and settings. That's not possible now, even if those collections are on the usb, because all the settings are on the laptops. So if I run on laptop A, open my collections and modify my settings and environments they are saved to laptop A. When I go to laptop B, they are not there.

Your option to read the preferences in a custom folder might work. It's only the json files that matter to me. I don't care about the cache and storage and logs in Appdata and it might be better to have that on the local machine anyway since some of it might be machine-specific. But it's messy to leave behind so could you also add a Clean option to remove any traces of Bruno from the local machine?

[anusree-bruno]

Why is it not possible?

I was not saying that this is technically not possible, I meant that the version today does not support it.

It's only the json files that matter to me.

Makes sense. We'd like to support an option to set a custom preferences path for storing the json files.

[reefhound]

I see in v2.4.0 changelog it says "Added option to customize userData path on dev mode". Is this the option we were discussing to store settings in a place other than automatically in Appdata?

I'm running v2.8.0 and I do not see this option anywhere, not in Preferences, not in Collection Settings. I'm in Developer Mode. Nor can I find anything to do with UserData in the Docs, either manually or searching.

[anusree-bruno]

This is implemented just for development see #4160 and #4694

[Tragen]

I hope we get the option to change the path. It was the first problem I noticed when I tried the zip version on Windowds.

[anusree-bruno]

I have created a github issue #5215 to allow user to configure custom AppData path