[HOT] HOT stick (Portable Apps) for Training/Workshops

[Harry Wood]

Blurting out some thoughts on this.

Dane Springmeyer worked on a "Installer" thing a long time ago:
https://github.com/hotosm/installer
Looks at bit old and Mapnik oriented (and Mapnik's moved on a lot!)
It makes reference to a "HOT Package" page:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/HOT_Package

More recently we discussed the idea in the tech working group
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/Working_groups/Technical/meeting_2013-07-01
And I think mapbox have a neat USB vector tile rendering thing up their sleaves: https://vine.co/v/b0DvTPnpPtw
We also discussed Ushahidi BRCK which has some storage capacity. Could do map caching tricks.

For applications there's a version management challenge. I think an idea we discussed was approaching this as a "build script" problem. You can distribute USB keys with lots of useful and up-to-date software and docs and data if you have a script to pull it all together.

But yes portableapps.com is interesting. I used to find the site very useful back when I developed on windows. I notice they have a development section http://portableapps.com/development to help people "portabalize" apps. A lot of the apps currently listed are quite mass-market. Not sure how JOSM and QGIS would fit into their categories, or whether they would want them on the central portableapps.com listings. Also I don't think they have web applications just a XAMPP server, so I guess installing things like field papers would still need to be scripted outside of that framework. 

Harry



----- Original Message -----
From: maning sambale <emmanuel.sambale at gmail.com>
To: HOT <hot at openstreetmap.org>
Cc: 
Sent: Thursday, 26 September 2013, 3:47
Subject: [HOT] HOT stick (Portable Apps) for Training/Workshops

Dear HOTties,

Has anyone tried building a USB Stick that runs all the needed
applications for an OSM Training?

For a series of training we will conduct, we are anticipating a lot of
different configurations and MS Windows versions.  They may use a
computer lab or their own laptops.

Instead of just giving the participants copies of the software
installers, we are thinking of building a PortableApp [0] stick
containing all the needed apps and resources.

Anyone tried this approach?  How is it effective?

A few things we want in the stick are:
* JOSM including all the necessary plugins (FieldPapers, Notes,
DirectUpload, GPXEdit, Building tools, Presets, GeoChat, Measurement,
Mirrored downloads, Reverter, Terracer)
* GPSBabel
* QGIS
* PDF reader
* Firefox or Chrome
* 7-Zip
* ClamWin
* Notepad++
* Learning materials (either offline or pdf version of learnOSM)
* Installers - installers of the above software


[0] http://portableapps.com/apps
-- 
cheers,
maning
------------------------------------------------------
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