From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 09 2011 - 10:43:23 CST

Hi Ajasja,
  Historically, on the Windows platform, one cannot reliably determine the
directory where the executable resides. I haven't researched this in a long
time now, but at least prior to Windows XP, you couldn't really determine
the executable location in a reliable manner. Nowdays with XP and later
versions, it might be possible, but I haven't looked into it since we've
been using the registry keys for 12 years now.

I'm too close to the final 1.9 release now to make any changes to
the way the installers work, but I am happy to look into this for
a later version of VMD.

Cheers,
  John

On Wed, Mar 09, 2011 at 03:21:46PM +0100, Ajasja Ljubeti?? wrote:
> Dear John,
> the beta is working great! I only have a two comments about the installer:
> * Is the registry key really necessary? The installer writes just one
> reg key under Software\University of Illinois\VMD\1.9\VMDDIR. But the
> VMD dir could be set to the directory that the executable is in
> automatically. (Then one could just copy the VMD folder to a different
> location/computer without installation).
> * Could the installer be changed slightly, to allow upgrading? Right now
> for every beta update it wants me to first uninstall the
> old installation...
> Or perhaps if you would release just the binaries without the
> installer as well.
> Best regards,
> Ajasja

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078