Portable launcher for Kodi

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Requirements
• Installation
• Features
• Kodi forums thread
• Third-party libraries/tools used
• License

Introduction

I was recently doing some research on using Kodi/XBMC (hereafter referred to as just Kodi) as a completely portable media centre, and I found this thread on the Kodi forum (which helped me out a lot): [Windows] Relative paths in portable mode.
There was one problem: everything had to be done through a batch file, which may ward off less-experienced users, and I couldn't find a GUI program that does the same as the batch file.
So I decided to make a program myself, which does (almost) the same as the batch file in the aforementioned forum thread, and more.

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If you're wondering why you need this program or a batch file in the first place to make Kodi portable, let me explain it to you.
Out-of-the-box Kodi is already able to be used as a fully-fledged portable media center (provided DirectX and the Visual C++ Redistributables are installed on every one of them, of course), but with one flaw: the media sources are static, which can cause problems if you use the same Kodi installation on multiple computers, because an external hard drive almost never has the same drive letter.

On one computer your media folder could be located at D:\Media. On another computer this might be E:\Media. Or F:\Media. And every time this path has to be updated in Kodi's settings, and every time all media has to be re-added. Nobody wants to have to do that the whole time, right? Which is where this program comes in.

Before your media folder would be located here:
Computer 1: D:\Media
Computer 2: E:\Media
Computer 3: F:\Media

After this program does its work, it's still located in those folders, but also in X:\ (or whichever letter you choose) on every computer.
So, essentially, what this program does is mount your media folder as a virtual hard drive, and then launch Kodi in portable mode, in which you can then (for example) specify X:\Music, X:\TV-series and X:\Films as your media sources, without ever having to change that again.

I'm planning to add more functionality in the future, such as the ability to keep the Kodi instllation up-to-date

Requirements

• At least Windows Vista; Windows 7 or higher recommended
• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.1 (installed by default on most modern Windows installations)
• Kodi (or XBMC)

Installation and usage

Nothing to install, just a single .exe file. Download from /releases.
On first launch, the program will ask you for a few things, which it needs to be able to work. You can change these settings after the first launch through the program's settings (the gear icon in the top-right - appears after you've finished the initial setup). The rest of the program should be pretty clear and not need any explanation, but if you need help you're free to contact me at the Kodi forums thread below, or create an issue.

Please do note that the program is currently in an experimental phase, which means that it might not be very stable, and you might encounter problems while using it.

Features

• Launch Kodi in portable mode (with Kodi.exe -p)
• Mount user's media folder (using the C# equivalent of subst.exe)
• TO-DO: move Kodi's installation folder to another place (an external hard drive, for example) if it's installed on the C:\ drive (such as C:\Program Files (x86)\Kodi or C:\Program Files\Kodi),
  and uninstall Kodi from the computer afterwards (if it was installed to Program Files).
• TO-DO: move Kodi's application data to the "portable_data" folder in Kodi's installation folder
• TO-DO: use a different way of storing settings that is portable
• TO-DO: install/update Kodi automatically

Kodi forums thread

[Windows] Portable launcher for Kodi

Third-party libraries/tools used

• MahApps.Metro (GitHub) by Paul Jenkins, Jake Ginnivan, Brendan Forster (shiftkey), Alex Mitchell (Amrykid), Dennis Daume (flagbug), Jan Karger (punker76) for the user interface, licensed under the Ms-PL (Microsoft Public License)
• The MahApps.Metro.Resources package, which includes the Modern UI Icon Pack (GitHub) (licensed under Creative Commons 3.0) by Austin Andrews of Templarian.com
• Windows API Code Pack 1.1 by 'Aybe' for the folder browser. Unknown license.
• Fody and Costura by Simon Cropp and Cameron MacFarland, for merging the program and all references (dependencies) into one .exe file, so the end-user doesn't have to download a ton of .dll files. Licensed under the MIT License.

License

Copyright © 2015 nidunc  

"Portable launcher for Kodi" is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

"Portable launcher for Kodi" is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with "Portable launcher for Kodi".  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Full license in LICENSE

Kodi™ and XBMC™ are registered trademarks of the XBMC Foundation.
I am not affiliated with the Foundation in any way, nor do I claim to be.