[Unofficial] Dolphin Emulator Portable

[Jhonn]

Well, I have Dolphin in my external HDD alongside with my dumped ISOs, mainly focused in portability. However, every time I go to a new computer I get the silly "missing vcomp100.dll" message alongside the other required libraries not installed in that computer. Also, if my drive gets a new letter almost all Dolphin settings based on paths (ISO directory, Wii NAND root, etc) gets completely messed.

I'm using Portable Apps Platform from a long time and I decided to make a portable launcher using the PortableApps Format Specification, allowing us making almost any app portable (with some effort), so, I started coding a portable version of Dolphin based in this format and hope to get some feedback (bug reports, request features, etc.). In the current state, it automatically selects the build based on your OS (32 or 64 bits), include the required libraries (allowing you to run Dolphin in any PC, even when you can't install Visual C++ 2010 or DirectX Runtimes), and also fix the directories path (if you move to another directory or to another PC, using a different drive letter).

It's also fully compatible with the PortableApps Menu and after I finish implementing some features required by the PortableApps Format specification, Dolphin will be officially released at PortableApps.com (and can be the official one here too if the dev team allow me doing so). You can get the current version here, and would be nice having some testing feedback, report me if it works fine or if you have some problem...

Why installer?
The PortableApps apps are packaged in an installer for easy integration with the PortableApps menu and updater, but the installer itself doesn't modify anything in your computer. To test without using the PortableApps menu, just open the installer and choose your Desktop, for example. You'll get a folder named "DolphinEmulatorPortable" with all required content inside. You can just copy to an external HDD or flash drive and move to any computer, the launcher will take care of the rest

[AnyOldName3]

Didn't neobrain say last time this was suggested that you just needed to put copies of the DLLs dolphin relies on in the folder dolphin is stored in, and you wouldn't need the redistributables? That's the whole reason I'd not already done something like this with cameyo.

[neobrain]

Uh, actually I'm not really sure if you can just go ahead and redistribute those dlls arbitrarily. Especially when we're talking about GPL stuff...

That said, we could just create some sort of launcher application which executes the actual Dolphin exe when all required DLLs are found. The launcher application itself wouldn't have any dependencies and so could run anywhere.

[Jhonn]

Well, I'll do a little research about redistributing those DLLs... I'm pretty sure that I already seen at least one GPL application that redistributed DirectX runtimes arbitrarily, but I'll take a look at Microsoft EULAs...

[lamedude]

The vcomp100.dll is okay but its look like only the DX installer itself is redistributable not that has stoppped anyone. I hope the GPL doesn't care about linking against a system library from a system folder instead of the parent folder, but until the cg dlls are at least delay loaded so they aren't required to run the program we're going to incur the wrath of rms anyway.

[Jhonn]

Actually, there is a "way" of redistributing the DirectX DLLs without breaking Microsoft EULA. In the MSDN, there is an article with guidelines to developers in how they can include the DirectX Runtimes in their game installers, one of them is putting DirectX EULA in the installer (making the user accept it) then downloading and calling the silent installer to do the job. However, there isn't any enclosure in the EULA saying that we MUST run the installer after we downloaded it, so, what i'm implementing in the PortableApps installer of Dolphin is the DirectX EULA and then the installer download the required files directly from Microsoft, but instead of running the installer, the files get uncompressed in the destination directory... As long as we use Microsoft URLs there isn't anything that prevent us of doing this, I'll be using this "way" in the Development Test 3, that will be pushed soon

[cluthz]

Have you tried vcomp100.dll from wine?
The function set is not complete on those reverse engineered dlls, but you'll have no licensing issues.

[Jhonn]

Well, the thing is getting closer to an official release at PortableApps.com: we have now a Portable DirectX that download the required files from Microsoft and make the user accept the Microsoft EULA, so, no more issues regarding this... Something similar can be done with vcomp100.dll too, and will be implemented in Dev Test 4. Also, for a more recent information, refer to the topic in PortableApps forums: http://portableapps.com/node/35614

[lamedude]

Most of the C runtime dll's (including vcomp100) can be redistributed with the program.

[Jhonn]

None of the DX DLLs can be redistributed. Apparently redistributing vcomp100 is OK, but I haven't examined the Visual C++ EULA itself. If vcomp100 can't be redistributed, something similar to what was done with the DirectX DLLs will be implemented...