AppData

[sl2365]

First, I tried to Claim my Account on Discord but it won't allow me to do so. I don't use Discord, have no idea how it works and it has been a pita trying to sort it out! Hence I am posting this request here.

Anyway... I am using an app called X-Launcher by WinPenPack to make StemRoller portable. By portable, I mean that it saves all it's settings within the X-Launcher\Lib\AppData folder. But X-Launcher is now 10 years out of date. So I tried to learn how to compile it as a x64 version, in the hope of extending it's life. It seems to work just as good as the original.

There is one specific thing though:
[quote=lwc post_id=107065 time=1717450293 user_id=35242]
Hi, again I stress I don't think Stem Roller uses environment variables to determine where is appdata, at least neither APPDATA nor USERPROFILE. Can Stem Roller's author just tell you how does it decide where is appdata?[/quote]
This is a post from PortableFreeware.com forum.

So would you please answer the question posted above.

Tbh, it would be appreciated greatly if you could actually give users the option of saving these files within the StemRoller.exe folder instead of AppData, would you please consider that?

Thanks

[iffyloop]

Thanks for notifying me about this! I didn't know there was an active effort to get StemRoller running portably. I'm not available much over the next couple of weeks, but I'll try to figure out why it's not respecting the environment variable when I get a free moment. If you want to continue your own research, StemRoller is based on Electron (same as GitHub Desktop, VS Code, etc.) so maybe you can find some similar issues reported elsewhere.

[sl2365]

I appreciate you taking the time to look at this when you can. I'm afraid I am no programmer, I'm just trying to get a launcher taht works and find out why certain apps, like StemRoller, don't seem to obey EnvVar's.

Is it possible for you to change this and to allow users to store this data within StemRoller's folder?
Thanks for your help, no rush! :)

[iffyloop]

@sl2365 should be... I'm hoping to do that with the next app I release (which will be similar in some ways to StemRoller), so once I figure that out I'll backport it to StemRoller.

[sl2365]

That's great thanks :)

[iffyloop]

@sl2365 When you try to override AppData, does StemRoller pollute the non-portable AppData with only a config .json file, or does it write lots of files/directories?

[sl2365]

Sorry for the late reply!
It writes the entire AppData/Roaming/stemroller folder and contents.
I have been using an unofficial x64 updated version of X-Launcher that does the job for me. But if you are interested in making it fully portable, that would be great!
Thanks.

[iffyloop]

@sl2365 If the updated version of X-Launcher works, that seems to indicate maybe it was an issue with the older version of X-Launcher rather than StemRoller. I'm still interested in making StemRoller fully portable, but it probably won't happen for a while. Glad you were able to find a solution that works for you now, and thanks for sharing about it here so others can use it too!

[sl2365]

The issue wasn't with X-Launcher. X-Launcher was always working. The issue was with the app called AutoRunsCD on portablefreeware.com. For some reason, that app just flat out refused to make StemRoller portable, whereas X-Launcher had no problems at all.

The AutoRunsCD dev asked me to place a comment here about how StemRoller works in this regard. I was trying to move over to that app portabliser as X-Launcher is way out of date. But working with a user on pf.com, we managed to get it updated and x64 bit. So the whole reason for the OP is unnecessary now. But it would still be appreciated for the StemRoller app to be made fully portable, whenever you can. Thanks, I really appreciate your working on this app!

[infinity0]

Does #81 help you? I found out that StemRoller wasn't preserving the environment when running demucs.

[iffyloop]

@infinity0 It's a bit confusing, but the Electron process (which is the one responsible for creating those files in the AppData directory) still respects environment variables. Your PR only affects the Demucs child process, which AFAIK isn't the cause of this problem. But thanks for mentioning this here!