How to run MSVC++ 6.0 off a USB drive as a portable app

Question

Without using any third party program to do this (i.e. without VMware ThinApp, U3 or MojoPac etc.) How to move MSVC++ 6.0 from from its install on C: over to a USB drive? So that it can be used on different PCs with no admin rights and without installing anything on the host PC? Even if it's only usable as a console application would be fine, although to have the GUI including Visual Assist etc. would be even better.

Answer 1

Move the two folders that install created under c:\program files\ to the USB drive (e.g. to e:\progs\msvc\msvc6 and e:\progs\msvc\vc98), and append to the file e:\progs\msvc\vc98\bin\vcvars32.bat to suit e.g.

prompt $g
set path=e:\progs\uedit;e:\progs\utl;%PATH%
e:
cd e:\work
start e:\progs\uedit\uedit32.exe /i=e:\progs\uedit\uedit32.ini 
cmd /k

Using a shortcut to vcvars32.bat then works fine for doing any simple console programming, which is all I’m using it for so far. I don’t know how well any of the GUI type programs in the tools folder will function.

Answer 2

I am not sure exactly how one would do that.

Here are a few ideas.

The installation procedure creates at least two sets of directories, so you could direct both of them onto the usb drive.

The installation procedure creates a bat file, that sets up the environment variables correctly for command line execution. Modifying it to point to the correct drive letter when your memory stick loads on the other machine may be important.

There are also registry entries for vc 6. Extracting them, and having a script of some sort to load them onto your target machine when needed, might be useful.

Is there a specific reason why vc 6 is required? Would another compiler do?

Answer 3

I haven't done this, but it should "just" be a matter of:

• Copying all the application files to a USB drive. Remember there will be shared files and stuff that may need to go into the Windows directory.
• Identifying and copying all of the registry entries, although you may need to be admin to create some of these on the target machine.

That's a heck of a lot of work, for little gain in my opinion. I think there may be a command line only version of the Visual C++ tool chain that may better suit your requirements. IIRC it was released to help people create build bots for open source projects, like the Mozilla Tinderbox, and includes the VC++ 7.0 compiler.