[thought.software] Software installation

Remember the days software was completely contained in the directory it lived in?

For example, if you installed a program called WordProcessor it was installed in /apps/wordprocessor.  Your changes to its configuration were stored in /apps/wordprocessor/config.xml (or even /apps/wordprocessor/murray.xml if you had multiple users).

You could move the installation folder around as you wished, to another disk, another similar PC and it would still execute.

So what happened?

Proponents of the Windows Registry system might ask how you integrate with the desktop and operating system.  This could be easily achieved if software registered itself with the operating system every time it was run.