Writing USB Drive Portable Applications in C#

Question

One of my favorite things about owning a USB flash storage device is hauling around a bunch of useful tools with me. I'd like to write some tools, and make them work well in this kind of environment. I know C# best, and I'm productive in it, so I could get a windows forms application up in no time that way.

But what considerations should I account for in making a portable app? A few I can think of, but don't know answers to:

1) Language portability - Ok, I know that any machine I use it on will require a .NET runtime be installed. But as I only use a few windows machines regularly, this shouldn't be a problem. I could use another language to code it, but then I lose out on productivity especially in regards to an easy forms designer. Are there any other problems with running a .NET app from a flash drive?

2) Read/Write Cycles - In C#, how do I make sure that my application isn't writing unnecessarily to the drive? Do I always have control of writes, or are there any "hidden writes" that I need to account for?

3) Open question: are there any other issues relating to portable applications I should be aware of, or perhaps suggestions to other languages with good IDEs that would get me a similar level of productivity but better portability?

Answer 1

• 1) There shouldn't be any problems running a .NET app from a flash drive.
• 2) You should have control of most writes. Be sure you write to temp or some other location on the hard drive, and not on the flash drive. But write-cycles shouldn't be a problem - even with moderate to heavy usage most flashdrives have a life time of years.
• 3) Just treat it like's it any app that has xcopy style deployment and try to account for your app gracefully failing if some dependency is not on the box.

Answer 2

If you want to use com objects, use reg-free com and include the com objects with your program.