feat: Jan has a portable / non install version

[tomasts248]

Goal

• Jan can run on a thumbdrive
  • Executable
  • Data files
  • Models
• Windows
  • Build target

Problem
All the disadvantages of a regular installation and data portability caused by it.

Success Criteria
Being able to run Jan from a external drive and just doing a full back by copying the folder where it is extracted, using a portable installation is now a common good practice in software development and as such usually requested.

[Van-QA]

related to #1435

[freelerobot]

Not likely to be fully supported

We have some portability, but I'm not sure 100% portability makes sense for us at the moment.

Not sure if you disagree @dan-homebrew @hiento09

e.g.

1. Executable vs user/app data: already portable. All app data is in ~/.jan
2. Relative paths: requires rewriting a lot of things as we write to program files right now
3. Configuration files: already portable.

[hiento09]

@0xSage, I understand that portable here means the .exe file we ship to the user, and the user just needs to double-click for the Jan app to launch. It's similar to the AppImage format for Linux, where the user only needs to run ./jan.appImage for the Jan app to start without needing to install it on the OS.

[hiento09]

I agree with you that our data is in ~/jan, and allowing the data folder to be changed, so this portable version doesn't make much sense to me at the moment as well.

[tomasts248]

Not sure here, but cant the actual program files folder be redirected? and just have a launcher that redirects from program files to maybe another "program files " but rather than in the OS, in the portable app folder.

[v1ckxy]

@0xSage, I understand that portable here means the .exe file we ship to the user, and the user just needs to double-click for the Jan app to launch. It's similar to the AppImage format for Linux, where the user only needs to run ./jan.appImage for the Jan app to start without needing to install it on the OS.

Not exactly.
Portable means self-contained within the same path; just have a look at any application from portableapps.com:
There's a launcher, a data path and a binary path. You don't need an exe containing everything, doesn't make any sense.

The point is not to throw a lot of crap around elsewhere, as typically any app does (starting from LM Studio, using not just one or two different paths, but three+squirrel temp files)

Normally you want to use paths like this way (normally seen in unix)
starting from /apppath/ :

• bin/
• lib/
• config/
• logs/
• user/
• user/models/
• user/engines/
• user/whatever/
• downloads/
• temp/
• cache/

Regards.