.. _overview:

Overview
========

The PortableApps.com Launcher is a universal launcher to make almost anything
portable. To make things portable, it needs to be told by a developer what to
do. It gets this information from a file in the ``App\AppInfo\Launcher``
directory of a portable application package called ``AppNamePortable.ini``,
where *AppNamePortable* is the base name of the launcher executable.

Currently this manual is more of a reference manual than a how-to-do-things
manual. To start with, read about :ref:`install-launcher` and
:ref:`using-launcher-generator`.

The most useful sections are the :ref:`launcher.ini reference
<ref-launcher.ini>`, covering all the options available for configuring the
PortableApps.com Launcher without :ref:`writing custom code <custom-code>`, and
the :ref:`topics` sections, covering things like :ref:`registry` and :ref:`java`
(not an exhaustive list).

(This document is far from complete at the moment. You should probably look at
the start page to see a more general overview of what's available.)
