Multiple Portable REAPER Installations

[harryupbabble]

I can't do anymore tests, etc, because it's been almost a week since I uninstalled REAPER.

I may have to wait up to a year (or more) for REAPER 6.0 to get here because:

There's only 6 more updates till Version 6.0.

Not if they start fractalizing, like they did when Reaper was around v3.14. Then we had v3.141, then v3.1415, then v3.14159...

What Evil Dragon stated may be happening now because of the recent REAPER installers names:

5.90
5.91
5.92
5.93
5.941

Aarrghh.


I am now having thoughts like "I am going to buy REAPER 6.0 no matter what anyways, so is it so wrong to reinstall the most current REAPER (5.941) and ignore the nag screen till version 6.0 gets here and I buy it?"

By portably reinstalling the most current REAPER I could find out the exact size of a fresh install.

And do videos for the KVR DC18 happening in about ten days. Nah, I can't do that. I guess I'm sticking to REAPER 0.999 and Podium Free. I hope developers didn't completely go 64-bit because REAPER 0.999 can't load 64-bit VST plugins. But maybe Podium Free can. Something to check later. Heck, might as well do it right now. Thanks, think tank, for the input. Okey dokey, bye.

[EvilDragon]

When Reaper's demo mode expires you don't have any limitations imposed. Just the popup that you need to click away after the timer expires. You can still use it and pay whenever you can... Now, if you consider that ethical or not is a different matter, but devs themselves aren't bothered about it, so why should you be?

[EvilDragon]

And also, I was guessing that REAPER templates may not function years later.

That's not true. I still have track templates working since an early Reaper 3 version. As long as the plugin DLLs are the same it's all good.

I wanted to find out if changes made in the Preferences gets saved in a REAPER template.

Track template, or project template? Only Project Settings get stored in a project template. Preferences aren't stored in project templates.

[harryupbabble]

When Reaper's demo mode expires you don't have any limitations imposed. Just the popup that you need to click away after the timer expires. You can still use it and pay whenever you can... Now, if you consider that ethical or not is a different matter, but devs themselves aren't bothered about it, so why should you be?

If the picture is too blurry, this is what Justin (the main developer of REAPER) states:

"The purpose of having a 60-day evaluation period is so that users can determine if REAPER meets their needs. If the user wants to wait until 6.0 will be released in order to purchase a license, they must stop using REAPER for most of that period (as there's no way that we'll be releasing 6.0 in the next 60 days), otherwise they woudl be violating our license agreement (which isn't nice)!

Updating REAPER does not normally(*) extend the evaluation period -- if that were the case then nobody would ever need to purchase a license since we almost always update more than once every 60 days."

[harryupbabble]

I think doing it like what you mention in the first post is needlessly complicating things for no good reason.

I don't have a picture of the default Preferences for the MIDI Editor because I've uninstalled REAPER because the trial period expired.

But I remember at the time that I changed the Preferences to match the picture below that you provided, I remember thinking "Wowie, that's a lot of changes to the default MIDI Editor Preferences!!!"

I think that was the first time I ever changed anything in the Preferences. I wasn't yet taking screenshots at that time.

But then I had to re-install REAPER, I forget why, and I couldn't batch edit the 20,000 MIDI items anymore after the re-install. For about an hour after the re-install I was like "Oh man everything was working great but now I can't batch edit MIDI anymore!!!"

Yup, I spent about an hour trying to figure out why I couldn't batch edit MIDI anymore and came to the conclusion that the fresh "normal install" changed something. I remember deleting the REAPER folder for the fresh "normal install" and realised that maybe the Preferences file was in that deleted folder.

So if I had a "snapshot" or portable install of your solution and named that portable install "REAPER - Batch Edit 20,000 MIDI Items" then I might not have spent a couple of hours trying to remember "something" and my fresh "normal install" 's Preferences would have stayed at "default".

And all that happened about two months ago. If that happened 6 months ago, I don't think I would remember anything at all. I think I have mild attention deficit disorder or something or maybe just bad memory.

Luckily and barely, I did remember your "Batch Edit 20,000 MIDI items" solution and found that KVR web page and the picture below and was able to batch edit MIDI items again. And that's when I started taking screenshots of the Preferences whenever changes are made.

But now I'm thinking "I don't have to take screenshots nor remember Preferences combinations. All I have to do is create a portable install whenever a lot of functional changes involves the Preferences and the Actions thingy."

[Guenon]

Because you can export and import full Reaper configurations right from Preferences->General?

Harry, consider for a moment how messy it becomes if you have to jump from one portable installation to another, and if you have hundreds of them to maintain (this is really a stretch, but you said "one thousand" yourself, so... hnnng) -- I have to agree you do have a tendency to reach for complicated solutions, to such a degree it easily first raises a question "is he serious?", and only afterwards actual consideration of the proposed scenario .

But again, think what happens when you want to do a maintenance upgrade. On all of those numerous Reaper instances. And so on. Instead, take note of what ED said there. Juggling countless of separate installations isn't that productive, when you can export the exact configuration state of a Reaper installation any time, even including the theme, templates, keybindings, everything. And then you can import it back in, wholly or in part, afterwards. This is also how you can transfer a configured Reaper environment on another computer in one go.

I would advise making backups this way, and generally making configuration changes to the one installation you actually use, testing that your changes work, and if in doubt, then exporting that state into a new backup generation again, etc. So that you are building your working Reaper environment over time, and you can always roll back if you break something and try it again. In the long run, trying to do all of this via numerous separately maintained installations will most likely cause you more harm than good, imo.

[ghettosynth]

When Reaper's demo mode expires you don't have any limitations imposed. Just the popup that you need to click away after the timer expires. You can still use it and pay whenever you can... Now, if you consider that ethical or not is a different matter, but devs themselves aren't bothered about it, so why should you be?

If the picture is too blurry, this is what Justin (the main developer of REAPER) states:

"The purpose of having a 60-day evaluation period is so that users can determine if REAPER meets their needs. If the user wants to wait until 6.0 will be released in order to purchase a license, they must stop using REAPER for most of that period (as there's no way that we'll be releasing 6.0 in the next 60 days), otherwise they woudl be violating our license agreement (which isn't nice)!

What do you expect him to say? I maintain that this is orchestrated to increase market share. He can't say "use it as long as you want to" but he'd rather that you use it and become entrenched rather than go to the competition. If he were genuinely concerned then he could easily just exit after the nag screen rather than allow you to continue using the software.

[harryupbabble]

When Reaper's demo mode expires you don't have any limitations imposed. Just the popup that you need to click away after the timer expires. You can still use it and pay whenever you can... Now, if you consider that ethical or not is a different matter, but devs themselves aren't bothered about it, so why should you be?

If the picture is too blurry, this is what Justin (the main developer of REAPER) states:

"The purpose of having a 60-day evaluation period is so that users can determine if REAPER meets their needs. If the user wants to wait until 6.0 will be released in order to purchase a license, they must stop using REAPER for most of that period (as there's no way that we'll be releasing 6.0 in the next 60 days), otherwise they woudl be violating our license agreement (which isn't nice)!

What do you expect him to say? I maintain that this is orchestrated to increase market share. He can't say "use it as long as you want to" but he'd rather that you use it and become entrenched rather than go to the competition. If he were genuinely concerned then he could easily just exit after the nag screen rather than allow you to continue using the software.

You are probably right. But me, I thought Justin didn't program REAPER to terminate after the 60-day trial because he knows that most people are not sociopaths (supposedly, only 3 to 5 percent of the general population are sociopaths and they are probably not musicians because supposedly sociopaths are not into music-making and they especially cannot relate to sad music because that would require empathy) and normal people have a conscience and after a while they would think "Fair is fair, REAPER has been very useful and worth paying the $60, I can't keep using it beyond the 60-day trial."

Maybe some people don't even need the full 60 day to make a decision. Personally speaking, if the DAW is not very useful, entrenchment is impossible. I actually decided to buy REAPER on that first day that Evil Dragon solved my first problem. I was like "Wowie I'm going to use this DAW so much for editing mass midi data, I might as well buy it." But then other problems came up. Seemingly slow file saving, for one example. But Guenon solved that major problem.

It's true that I haven't tried the other DAWs so I don't really know if they could edit mass midi data better than REAPER. The other DAWs have "demo" limitations and all sorts of "hassles" but REAPER was "download me, use me, use the full uncrippled me". So I did.

But I am just guessing about Justin's intent. I can't always rely on guessing. I am just going to believe that Justin means what he says. After all, that "No" of his in the picture has an exclamation mark.

[harryupbabble]

Because you can export and import full Reaper configurations right from Preferences->General?

Harry, consider for a moment how messy it becomes if you have to jump from one portable installation to another, and if you have hundreds of them to maintain (this is really a stretch, but you said "one thousand" yourself, so... hnnng) -- I have to agree you do have a tendency to reach for complicated solutions, to such a degree it easily first raises a question "is he serious?", and only afterwards actual consideration of the proposed scenario .

But again, think what happens when you want to do a maintenance upgrade. On all of those numerous Reaper instances. And so on. Instead, take note of what ED said there. Juggling countless of separate installations isn't that productive, when you can export the exact configuration state of a Reaper installation any time, even including the theme, templates, keybindings, everything. And then you can import it back in, wholly or in part, afterwards. This is also how you can transfer a configured Reaper environment on another computer in one go.

I would advise making backups this way, and generally making configuration changes to the one installation you actually use, testing that your changes work, and if in doubt, then exporting that state into a new backup generation again, etc. So that you are building your working Reaper environment over time, and you can always roll back if you break something and try it again. In the long run, trying to do all of this via numerous separately maintained installations will most likely cause you more harm than good, imo.

Hello again Guenon. First of all, thanks very very very much for your solution regarding the reduction of 5.5 hours waiting time to 2 minutes. I didn't do the math but that's like a gadzillion percent improvement in terms of file saving efficiency compared to Project Bay export?

About the theoretical portable installs... once they are installed, there would be no need to do maintenance on them. Just like I don't do any maintenance on REAPER version 0.999. That version could still do everything it was designed to do during the time it was created. In 2006, people actually used REAPER 0.999 to compose songs and stuff and was happy with it most times? But in terms of editing mass MIDI data, forget about it.

I've begun searching for a Windows utility that will prevent me from altering/deleting any files inside those future REAPER 6.0 portable installs. I would actually want to "lock" everything. I can even use such a Windows utility on other folders right now. I noticed that in Windows 7, even if I turn folders and files to "read-only"... I can still delete them.

So yeah, I can't test anything till REAPER 6.0 arrives so this thread is futile in terms of me trying out stuff like importing and exporting configuration files. According to Justin, doing that "isn't nice". I mainly created this thread because I thought I had a great solution for confused newbies like me. My solution has near zero complexity. Do a portable install, alter the Preferences according to a solution to a problem, lock the portable install with a Windows file-locking utility. Repeat as much as needed.

But again, since I've already uninstalled REAPER, I can't even test that "import/export configuration files" method. You and Evil Dragon and others are probably right. But probably only if you are NOT looking at it from a newbie's POV? I am guessing that you and Evil Dragon and others are super-experienced REAPER gurus and you guys/gals have forgotten the typical newbie's perplexed perspective of REAPER? Okay, that might be a bad guess. It's, of course, open to correction(s). But when you guys/gals first started with REAPER, was REAPER as complex as it is now? Obviously, REAPER 0.999 is not as complex as REAPER 5.941.

Or am I the only perplexed REAPER newbie? I don't think so because if you visit the REAPER forums, all sorts of newbies seem perplexed.

Anyways, I'm calling it a night. Good night then. And again, a thousand thanks for that solve.

[ghettosynth]

I think that you've already wasted $30 of even your time. This is the very definition of penny wise and pound foolish. If we assume that each release is 1/2 of the, f**king cheap, $60 price tag that includes two full versions, that each last multiple years, then not delaying your purchase you are throwing away at most $30. I've lost more money than that just falling out of my pocket over the years. I've wasted more money than that on silly things and even plugins that I don't use.

If I were you, I would do one of two things. I would install it and use it until 6.0 came out, despite what the license agreement said, or, if I couldn't sleep at night about that, I'd just fork over the $60 so I could get a good night's sleep. I damn sure wouldn't agonize over it like you're doing here.

[EvilDragon]

Justin says "it isn't nice" but also doesn't say he will sue you. Reaper doesn't call back home so that Cockos can check how long you've been using Reaper outside of the demo period. So... It's up to you, really.

[BertKoor]

If you think future maintenance is not needed, then buy Reaper now! But only by trying out in the future you will know for sure.

The windows utility you're looking for is right-click on the folder - select Properties and make it read-only for everybody. Though that defeats the purpose since you have then locked yourself out. The program runs under your privileges.

Also you can make it a Git repository, let Git track all changed files.

I would not recommend this, complete waste of time. What is an hour of your time worth?

[ghettosynth]

What is an hour of your time worth?

He could have panhandled $60 in the time that it's taken to write the posts here and on the cockos forum...sheesh!

[whyterabbyt]

My solution has near zero complexity. Do a portable install, alter the Preferences according to a solution to a problem, lock the portable install with a Windows file-locking utility. Repeat as much as needed..

Saving multiple copies of the entire application as a mechanism for switching between multiple copies of the preferences for that application is not 'near zero complexity'.

[Guenon]

I mainly created this thread because I thought I had a great solution for confused newbies like me. My solution has near zero complexity. Do a portable install, alter the Preferences according to a solution to a problem, lock the portable install with a Windows file-locking utility. Repeat as much as needed.

There are times when it really really benefits beginners to actually listen to someone with more experience. In my opinion, this is one of those times . If this thread goes like they usually do, people will offer you valuable points on why this approach is pretty convoluted, in any case, and instead of really taking heed of those points, you counter those with seemingly deep musings on different kinds of creativity and such, which only serves to rationalize your way as workable and totally forward thinking even. This happens over and over, even if you at the same time say you are a beginner and lost. There's a dissonance there.

It feels like a big part of all this is just you trying to get all those reactions.

I'm not saying this just to you, as after reading your responses there is this pattern surfacing again, and I think there is a greater than zero probability you are doing these experiments also to get a rise out of people. I'm saying this to anyone reading and considering going the "install hundreds of separate locked versions of the same DAW with slightly different preferences, then juggle projects between those instances" route (it's a thing!), seemingly just to be sure each version performs a separate task the way you want to do it. This is way overly complicating things, especially when dealing with a DAW you can just import a specific configuration into when you really need to.

This idea might sound good at the very beginning of your journey, but managing such scaffolding will very likely hinder your progress and the development of your flow in the long run.