Portable IDE

[Astronouth7303]

As an FYI, you can do it with Eclipse as well. (Haven't tried it with MCC18, though.)

1. Download Eclipse for your platform
2. Extract to a temporary location on your harddrive (I'm calling it ...\eclipse)
3. Create the directory ...\work (your workspace)
4. Install needed plugins
5. KEY STEP Open ...\eclipse\config.ini in a text editor and replace

   osgi.instance.area.default=@user.home/workspace

   with

   osgi.instance.area.default=@user.dir/../work
   osgi.instance.area=@user.dir/../work
   osgi.user.area.default=@user.dir/../work
   osgi.user.area=@user.dir/../work

   Save.
6. Copy ...\eclipse and ...\work to your flash drive.

One thing I've found is that sometimes Eclipse leaves residue in %USERPROFILE%\.eclipse (eg, C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\.eclipse). This may be safely deleted. Here's what I did for Windows (eclipse.cmd):

@echo off
IF EXIST "%USERProfile%\.eclipse" (
 RMDIR /S /Q "%USERProfile%\.eclipse"
)
pushd eclipse
start "" "eclipse.exe" "-data \work"
popd

Note that the last bit (start "" ...) negates the need for step #5 above. You just need to put your workspace in your root. Also, I don't know how well the above interacts with an installed Eclipse. PM me for full details as to how I set up my drive.

Just be warned, this may wear out a flash drive, since building projects often involves much writing to disk. You may want to opt for a mobile harddrive (eg, an iPod) instead.