I am a music teacher in Canada, and will be working with a composer who will be helping high school students to learn how to create with Pure Data.

I am wondering if anyone on the forum is familiar with the "Portable" version of Pure Data Vanilla. I have used other "Portable" versions of software at the school with great success, instead of installing the program in the Lab for all students. (Essentially, each music student would download the portable version on their school account, then when they log in, regardless of the computer, the software will be accessible.)

Does anyone have any experience with this issue? This would make the "installation process" easier on my end as I can avoid the LAN administrator having to re-image all the computers in the library.

Thanks in advance!
Shawn

@abedinshawn Pure Data is essentially portable..... i.e. it does not have to be installed, but can be unzipped to a folder and used straight away by opening the executable in Pd/bin/
As it is free, there is no reason that every student should not have a copy on their computer so that they can work with any OS, and without having to log into the university server.

The patches can of course be shared, and you could have a central repository.
Paths are the biggest problem using Pd, with all patch folders needing to be added to Pd Path Preferences, and libraries will need to be declared in Pd Start-up Preferences.

I would suggest that you PM other universities that teach Pd, and ask whether they have tried serving it up centrally, and what solutions (if any) were best....
David.

Thanks for your response @whale-av !

And that's a great idea re: contacting universities about how they manage the access to Pd.

Thanks again,
Shawn