Portable version only licensed on one system

[jaraco]

I’m using the latest “stable” SublimeText 3 beta (Summer 2013) on Windows (64-bit). I’m using the portable version, installed on Dropbox.

I’m a registered user of SublimeText 2 and have that key registered with the editor.

I recently got a new PC so I’m running the two devices simultaneously. However, SublimeText seems to only be registered on one device at a time. If I register on one device, the other shows as Unregistered.

This seems like a bug to me. The application isn’t properly portable if it can’t be used on alternate machines without invalidating the license.

Since the license appears to be machine-specific, can you suggest a way to cause the license to be stored in a machine-local location such that I can use the editor on two devices?

It’s possible there’s another factor here - I’m using Windows 8.1 with a Microsoft-linked account, so there may be some settings that are shared between devices via that mechanism. Perhaps the license is being “synched” between devices that way, and thus violating an expectation of SublimeText.

Is there any documentation about how the licenses are stored/managed for the portable version of SublimeText 3?

Any advice is appreciated.

[jaraco]

I now see my folly.

I’m not only using the portable version on Dropbox, but I’m also symlinking the application data to “%APPDATA%\Sublime Text 3”. I do this so that my plugins, configuration, and preferences are synched across machines (and backed up to the cloud).

Still, I contend that the behavior I’m experiencing is unexpected and should be corrected in Sublime Text.

The %APPDATA% is the roaming profile, which is designed to be shared across systems. I believe if the license is machine-specific, it should be stored in the %LOCALAPPDATA% location, where Sublime Text already stores other local settings (Cache and Index).

Is there any way for Sublime Text to support my use case (synchronized settings without breaking the licensing check)? There’s no way to “exclude” the Local directory while still synching everything else in “%APPDATA%\Sublime Text 3”, and I’d really rather avoid selectively symlinking specific subdirectories.

Is there a specific reason why %LOCALAPPDATA% isn’t used?

[quodlibet]

@wbond, creator of Package Control, recommends the following :
sublime.wbond.net/docs/syncing#dropbox-windows

Does that help you?

(I’m on Windows XP, so I just put the entire portable Sublime folder in Dropbox and use that. Crude, but effective

Alex

[jbjornson]

If I understand your problem correctly, this topic was brought up a few months ago. Apparently the license key is XOR-ed with your machine id which makes the license file un-portable across machines. The good news is that all you have to do is edit the license file and replace the contents with the plain text version of your license key and it will work on any machine.

[jps]

jbjornson is correct. FWIW the portable version does this automatically, however it looks like the symlink modifications you have made are making the portable version believe it’s the regular version.