executable archives

[Agashka]

Hi, ive been googling for quite a while, without answers.

Right now, im in the process of a big cleanup, from what i've seen, 1 of my program, take an aweful lots of files, witch get slow to transfer, so I have to keep a compressed version of the program, and a uncompressed version of this program. I would make a self-extract archive, but it's a little big and take quite a while to extract.

I was googling for executable archives, in my mind, i'd expect to put all the program into an archive, and somehow run it (just think at iso files, java .jar files, and im no expert, but i think python have this too)
It would run slower, i agree, but I don't really care, because the program is almost 10 years old but still kick ass. It can take 200mb ram more if it want, i don't really care, I just want it to take less files!

edit:
so far , where I'm at right now; is to put all files into a ISO and mount it with deamon tools, but It sorta suck, because my program is not more portable anymore (aka usb friendly) so a quick way to run iso's without actually mounting them would be also acceptable, also need to be 'driver less' (unlike deamons)

thanks for any help

 

[Joe Average]

Sounds like you want a self-extracting archive (done with Zip or RAR) or perhaps you're looking to make that application "portable" using Thinstall. Do some research on Thinstall and see if that's what you're actually trying to do.

 

[Agashka]

Yes, i've tried those, I've been using them for months in fact, but they actually extract the files before running the application witch kills it because there is alot of files, and the application is rather heavy (200mb, and... 50 000 files i think)
it takes somewhere between 1 and 2 minutes just to extract.

 

[Joe Average]

Well nothing is really going to alter that extraction time. Only solution is a faster system, a much faster hard drive, or perhaps executing/extracting the application to a RAMdisk.