[Users] Portable usage of Claws Mail

[Dr. Peter Voigt]

Am Thu, 22 Nov 2012 17:00:56 +0100
schrieb Colin Leroy <colin at colino.net>:

> On Thu, 22 Nov 2012 16:47:52 +0100, "Dr. Peter Voigt" <pvoigt at uos.de>
> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> (No need to Cc me on users@, I'm subscribed)
> 
> > I often have to work on changing foreign Windows PCs. Therefore I'm
> > interested in a portable version of Claws Mail running from a USB
> > stick.
> 
> There's one over at portable-apps.com:
> http://portableapps.com/node/27682
> 
> > Is there a ZIP distribution of
> > http://www.claws-mail.org/win32/claws-mail-3.9.0cvs12-pkg23.exe
> > available? If not, could it be provided?
> 
> No (or not by me). Windows development is something I do for a
> fraction of our userbase mostly because I've interacted with a few of
> them since a few years and like them... But not enough to spend yet
> more time with yet another port who is of interest to a fraction of
> the fraction of our userbase :)
>  
> > Alternatively, could I simply copy the directory
> > C:\Program Files (x86)\GNU\Claws Mail and the settings directory to
> > my USB stick? Where exactly does the above installer spread it's
> > files over the hard disk? Are the any registry settings required
> > for running Claws Mail?
> 
> I suppose, if you ask the installer to install in some F: drive,
> and tell Claws' wizard to store its mail in F:\Mail, and launch Claws
> with --alternate-config-dir F:\something, it will work as long as your
> USB stick is mounted in F:
> 
> Unsupported, though.

Well, even if last activity is now about 2 month ago, I'd like to give
some feedback to other possible portable users of Claws.

I've finally found some time to test the portable capabilities of Claws
Mail. Good news first: The standard Windows Version of Claws
under http://www.claws-mail.org/win32/claws-mail-3.9.0cvs12-pkg23.exe
is fully usable on a USB stick. I've tested it under Windows XP and
Windows 7 x86_64 so far. If you are interested in Claws only, e.g.
without PGP and S/MIME support, just proceed as Colin described above.

Thinks are getting a bit trickier, if you need PGP and/or S/MIME. It
took me some time to test it out, because both portable Claws and
portable Gpg4win (http://files.gpg4win.org/gpg4win-2.1.0.exe) usage is
unsupported and hence not described anywhere.

For a real Claws user PGP and/or S/MIME usage is a must. Fortunately,
I've had some experience with portable usage of Gpg4win. I've just
copied the Gpg4win folder onto me USB stick and set following
environment variables: HOME, HOMEDIR and GNUPGHOME. With these
variables Gpg4win is fully usable to me on the command line. I did no
testing of GPA or Kleopatra. I you wish successful Gp4win interaction,
you have to tell Claws where to find Gpg4win. These settings are stored
in the following registry keys: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\GNU\GnuPG
and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\GNU\Claws-Mail. Each key needs the entry
"Install Directory" pointing to the Claws installation directory.

I'm glad to having a portable Claws as well, because in the meanwhile
Claws Mail has become my favorite email client.

Peter