We have an app that currently installs itself into ‘program files\our app’, and it puts the internal data files into the common Application Data folder. This means the program is available to any user on that particular PC.
Now we want to make a multi-user version of this program, multiple PCs accessing the program at the same time across the network.
In the bad old days, under XP, we’d just have the user who installed the app ‘share’ the app directory and off we’d go. In principle, is this still the ‘right’ way to do it under Vista/Windows 7?
We’d like to do this ‘properly’ and be as compliant as possible! Is there a recommended ‘Microsoft’ approach for doing this, or is it largely down to whatever we can get away with and subsequently support (hah!). I’ve tried researching this on the MS websites but not found anything too helpful at all – it’d be really useful to have a ‘if you’re trying to install this kind of thing, put it here‘ type guide for developers!
Reading between the lines from other resources, and trying to make sense of it all, I’ve decided that the ‘right’ place to put the program data for this stuff really will be in the AppData (Roaming) folder, and the right place to put the program binary files themselves really will be the Program Files folder of the host computer, which I can then share out.