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I've just bought a new 4GB USB thumb drive and I'm trying to decide what to put on it. I'm thinking about one of the webserver on a stick packages, a C/C++ IDE (leaning toward Code::Blocks; had Dev-C++ on my old USB drive) and Python.

What development related tools do you carry around with you on yours?

Update

I've added categories.

IDEs

Code::Blocks Open source, cross platform C/C++ IDE

  • Supports several compilers (that you must supply) but you can also download a version that includes MingW.
  • (There's a FAQ question on their website explaining how to make it portable)

Codelite -- Open-source, cross platform C/C++ IDE
Eclipse -- Open-source, cross platform Java IDE
NetBeans -- Open-source, cross platform Java IDE
JCreator -- Java IDE
MSVC6 -- Microsoft's pre-.NET C/C++ environment

Languages & Compilers

Portable Python -- Interpreter for the Python programming language

  • Includes SciTE (editor) and Django (web framework)

Strawberry Perl -- "A 100% Open Source CPAN-capable Perl for Windows® computer that works exactly the same as Perl everywhere else."
Py3k -- Newest version of the Python programming language
Stackless Python
Lua -- Scripting language
MinGW -- Sort of a Windows port of GCC

  • "MinGW provides a complete Open Source programming tool set which is suitable for the development of native Windows programs that do not depend on any 3rd-party C runtime DLLs."

Editors

Notepad++ (after so many recommendations, I had to try it)
UltraEdit -- "text, hex, HTML, PHP, Java, Javascript, Perl, and programmer's editor."
VIM -- "highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing"

  • Major rival to emacs

HEdit -- Hex editor
XVI32 (Hex Editor)
e text editor -- "The Power of Textmate on Windows"
Intype text editor -- Code editor for Windows
ConTEXT -- Code and text editor
Editpad Pro -- "powerful and versatile text editor or word processor."

Discovery

Dependency Walker -- Allows you to see what DLLs a program or DLL depends on and what functions they export.
Reflector -- Allows you to look into and decompile .Net assemblies
Spy++
DbWin32 -- Lets you see Windows debug and trace messages

  • Similar to DebugView

DebugView -- Lets you see Windows debug and trace messages

Web & Network

Firefox Portable (with Firebug)
OperaUSB -- Web browser
XamppLite -- Package that includes Apache, PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, OpenSSL & SQLite
PuTTY -- telnet and SSH client
Wireshark -- network protocol analyzer (packet sniffer)
WinSCP -- SFTP, FTP and SCP client for Windows

Diff/Merge

SourceGear DiffMerge -- Compare two files side by side and merge if needed.
WinDiff -- File comparison tool
Winmerge -- "Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows."

Unix-like Tools

GNU Utilities for Win32 -- Windows version of several Unix/Linux tools
Cygwin -- Port of a Unix type environment to Windows
PowerGREP -- GREP tool

Visual Studio & .NET

NUnit -- Unit testing for .NET
TestDriven.NET -- Easily run your unit tests from Visual Studio
AnkSVN -- Subversion plugin for Visual Studio
LINQPad -- Tool to interactively develop Linq queries.

  • "lets you interactively query SQL databases in a modern query language: LINQ"

Regular Expression Tools

Expresso -- Regular Expression tool
RegexBuddy -- Regular Expression tool

Misc

The Sysinterals Suite (includes DebugView, Process Explorer, & more)
WinZip
DosHere
7-zip -- Open source file archiver
Scrollbar fix for VB6
puretext -- Paste w/ formatting removed
VirtualBox -- Open source virtualization product.

  • Similar to VMWare or VirtualPC
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Slapout
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    Please mark as Community Wiki – Jay Bazuzi Jan 05 '09 at 18:15
  • If you know what tools you regularly use, those are the ones you should copy; if you don't know, then there's no reason to copy anything. – kdgregory Jan 05 '09 at 18:32
  • What does marking it as Community Wiki do? – Slapout Jan 06 '09 at 22:15
  • Tip: many of the sysinternals apps are now executable directly off the site. Of course you may still want a portable copy for disconnected situations. – Chris Noe Jan 07 '09 at 16:50
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    I just bought a 32GB thumb drive, and I see at least 64GB is available. Dare I suggest Visual Studio and MSDN online documentation? ;) – Arjan Einbu May 07 '09 at 12:57
  • Arjan, I will admit, with the way the thumb drive sizes are going, the size isn't so much an issue any more. I just checked Newegg.com and they have 2GB drives for under $10. – rjzii May 07 '09 at 13:00
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    Bring your Linux OS with you =D – Nuno Furtado May 07 '09 at 13:13
  • @Chris Now: But it's so, sooooooooo sloooooooooow :) – Lucas Jones Jul 13 '09 at 21:59
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    I don't own a USB drive, not sure why I'd want to load one with programming tools anyways? Is it in case there's a sudden programming emergency on that airline flight you're on? "The wing just fell off, but don't worry, I've got a C++ compiler in my pocket!" :-) – Brian Knoblauch Feb 14 '11 at 21:11
  • In order to keep answers from being too broad, it helps if you say the USB does not need to be bootable but ideally the tools should be cross-platform. – smci Jul 25 '19 at 01:09

58 Answers58

23

Assuming a Windows Machine:

kgiannakakis
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Sysinternals tools

JoshBerke
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I use a 16GB USB-Stick (larger volumes are available) as a Linux-system, that contains my complete work-environment. Every computer I use boot from this drive into my system.

Mnementh
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    May I know which distribution do you use ? – Sake May 07 '09 at 13:28
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    Ubuntu 9.04. This detects the correct screen-resolution on different machines. – Mnementh May 07 '09 at 14:45
  • I'd absolutely follow your path. I've found some guide to do this via google. Any tip you can share ? Would it be fine if I'll try Kubuntu instead ? – Sake May 07 '09 at 14:57
  • This is a great idea! Thanks for sharing that. – Jon Ownbey May 07 '09 at 15:07
  • @Sake: As far as I know Kubuntu only differs in the default Desktop-environment, that should be fine. But I don't know if Ubuntu 8.10 works. Other Linux-distributions should also work, try it out :-) – Mnementh May 07 '09 at 20:45
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    Ubuntu can install itself onto a flash drive and make it bootable. Just boot the LiveCD and run the "install onto USB drive" app. You can also look into Wubi for doing a similar install. – Barry Brown Jan 12 '10 at 20:40
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    @Barry Brown: As far as I know this only creates a live-CD on an USB-stick. I did the normal install on the stick, it works fine if you have enough space. – Mnementh Jan 13 '10 at 15:35
  • i do this too, but is quite slower than a real hd installation.. did you some trick gain some speed? – Strae Nov 04 '10 at 22:44
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I like PortableApps. I use NotePad++, OpenOffice applications, etc.

jrcs3
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I recommend .NET Reflector

mmcdole
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Thomas Levesque
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For Windows, many of the sysinternal tools.

TheSoftwareJedi
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  • I would be lost without Process Explorer and Autoruns on any stranger's system, especially when I'm trying to "fix" their "slow starting" problems. – thomasrutter May 05 '09 at 01:43
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The Portable Apps website has a load of applications that may be useful, such as WinMerge, Notepad++ and Gimp.

If you do a lot of web development that I believe thatAptana will fit on a thumb drive.

Sean
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Dale
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Ubuntu Linux

Mark A. Nicolosi
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    +1 - if you want to carry development tools with you, why not an entire development environment? I have Kubuntu installed on an 8G thumb drive, and it's sufficiently performant for the environments where I find myself booting it up – kdgregory Jan 05 '09 at 18:32
5

I have a lot on one of my keys, mostly asm related.

I also have

And some other stuff that I can't remember as I don't have it on me :'(

I also have a usb key with backtrack3 on it and one with a windows image that I can use to install it on my netbook really quickly. I think this is a good guide on doing that.

Henry B
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Note: I am a Windows developer. This colours what you read below.

  • Dependency Walker (Depends.exe)
  • WinZip
  • Notepad++ (v5)
  • DbWin32
  • Process Explorer
  • HEdit - a hex editor
  • WinDiff
  • Ripper - an app I co-wrote for stripping redundant lines from log files.
  • DelSub - an app I wrote for deleting files with given extensions in a folder tree. Handy for removing NCBs and PCHs etc. before backup.
  • DosHere - an explorer extension for adding a "command prompt here" entry to the context menu for any folder. This is the FIRST THING I put on any windows box I have to use.
  • DeTab - an app I wrote for stripping tabs out of source files. Note to self - need to update this for Unicode.

Note the emphasis on debugging native code here, because if I'm out in the field, that's usually what I'm doing.

Bob Moore
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  1. Firefox
  2. Notepad++
  3. Python
  4. Some music (it calms me between coding jobs!)
Salty
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It's handy to have http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ (grep/cut/sh etc...) You may need some environment better then cmd to run it. Try FAR - http://www.farmanager.com/index.php?l=en (use open source one).

Denver is all in one web server package (also with usb-flash install support): http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=uk&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.denwer.ru%2F&sl=ru&tl=en&history_state0=

But it is for russian audience.

Also: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/portable-software-usb/

Malx
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PortableApps.com has most of what's on my portable USB drive:

  • Filezilla
  • Firefox
  • Notepad++
  • PuTTY
  • Wireshark

Besides those, I also have Beyond Compare on my USB drive.

jeffl8n
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When I am debugging something on someones' machine, the first thing I do is install Vim. Join us, it's a way of life.

RedBlueThing
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Rad
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I use to take with me UnixUtils.

UnixUtils are a set of commands of Unix ported to windows, so I only have to add a directory to the windows path and then i'm able to use most of the common linux command in the shell of a windows machine, making my job easier.

Jonathan
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I would add LINQPad to this list. If you have to do anything at all with LINQ queries, it's must-have software. It has a self-contained executable so you could run it completely from a thumb drive if you wanted to.

Scott Lawrence
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  • +1 for LINQPad ! And it's not restricted to Linq, it's also very useful for quickly testing a piece of code without creating a VS project – Thomas Levesque Sep 30 '09 at 13:02
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My VPN Client Software ;)

MMmm Sweet sweet remote desktop. drool

Kieveli
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Ones not mentioned:

  • WinSCP (for all your S/FTP, etc connections)
  • LINQPad (for all your .NET code testing)
  • PuTTY
Aaron Powell
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  • Putty
  • WinSCP
  • Notepad++ - a must have.
  • Firefox - another must have.
  • XAMPP - there is a standalone version especially for memory sticks which works well.
  • Netbeans
Mark Davidson
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I carry a VirtualBox hard drive file that contains the whole development environment for our project.

It takes about a minute to set up on a any new machine for development in a familiar environment.

Install VirtualBox, create a new virtual machine, plug in the usb drive, point the virtual machine to the hard drive file, boot into the dev environment from the virtual machien. Takes about a minute atop of the download time of VirtualBox.

Nick Zalutskiy
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  • Interesting solution, I like it. Would probably need a relatively large USB drive I guess (4GB at the minimum?) – thomasrutter May 05 '09 at 01:51
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    I've been using this approach for a couple of months now. Here are some additional observations: Make your VM drive large (14 gigs here so it fits on the 16 gig stick); resizing VM drives is a b*tch and no 8 gigs is NOT enough, you will run out. How much space is used on your dev box by IDEs etc.? You get the idea. Needless to say, speed of the drive matters. You can also copy the VM image to the HD before you boot the VM. Which brings me to... Treat any specific VM image as completely disposable. This means check in or otherwise "shelf" your progress at a remote location, religiously. – Nick Zalutskiy May 06 '09 at 18:23
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  • emacs
  • tucan (for windows backups)
  • putty
  • winscp
  • SVN repository
Nuno Furtado
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grep, definatly gotta have a grep tool of some kind.

Muad'Dib
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I recommend WinDbg.

BobbyShaftoe
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and FTP program like WinFTP and crossloop

northpole
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Expresso is a must-have for designing and testing regular expressions

Thomas Levesque
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I have a 160 GB portable hard drive from Western Digital -- So I carry around a lot of stuff with me.

In no particular order:

  • XAMPP

  • Portable Python

  • 7-Zip

  • SysInternals Suite
  • DOSBox

  • PuTTY & PSFTP

  • MySQL GUI Tools

  • Notepad++
  • RegexBuddy 3
  • LINQPad

The installers for every major web browser, Komodo Edit, Cygwin, Git, and my favorite Python modules.

Sean Vieira
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apache, php5 and mysql (as well as notepad++)

I also have some scripts that copy the php.ini file to the C:\windows folder,etc.

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  • How do you install Apache/MySQL to a portable drive? This sounds interesting. – thomasrutter May 05 '09 at 01:45
  • I copied the contents of c:\program files\Apache Group to the thumb drive. I also have a batch script which launches the server: start cmd.exe /k "%DEV_KEY_DRIVE%\Apache Group\Apache2\bin\Apache.exe" – cbrulak May 05 '09 at 13:19
  • Or you can use XAMPP http://apachefriends.org/xampp – Lucas Jones Jul 13 '09 at 22:00
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I was about to say: "Nothing" and I decide to double check my USB and I found VIM and my .vimrc and ProcessXP

I don't usually use it from there, but from time to time ( 3 -6 months ) I get into a new machine and copy them from the usb.

OscarRyz
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  • Strawberry Perl, I had to edit some batch files to use the USB e: instead of the hard drive c:
  • MinGW, for GCC, G++ and added GDB, maybe MSYS when I get around to it
  • MSVC6, just for console apps so far, haven't tried to include MSDN
  • Codelite, for an IDE, better than Code::Blocks and lighter than Eclipse
  • Ultraedit v9, more recent versions are too bloated and slow, and probably don't run from USB
  • Quite a few other utilities that come in useful, e.g. grep, ssed, batch files to setup environment variables and start Perl, GCC or VC, etc.
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Rob Kam
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I would add to the list this great OSS for Windows:

  • 7-zip. It can handle not only zips, gzs, bz2s, rars or arjs but even rpms or isos.
  • Winmerge. A directory/file comparation tool is always necessary.
Fernando Miguélez
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I have my mobile phone number as the USB drive name so if I lose it an honest person could call me and return it.

AndyM
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In addition to most tools already listed...

Process Explorer
Process Monitor
AutoRuns
Expresso
KeePass
ReNamer
TrueCrypt
Gordon Bell
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I'm surprised JGsoft's excellent suite of tools hasn't been mentioned yet, particularly considering the author is one of us:

  • EditPad Pro (IMO, the best damn text editor there is)
  • RegexBuddy (the regex debugger)
  • PowerGREP (may not be vital if you're carrying Cygwin around, but it's more featureful than "real" grep and has a nice GUI to boot)

Sure, none of them are free, but they're sanely licensed and all of them support portable installation.

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  • I use an older (postcard-ware) version of EditPad every day. It's the first thing I install on a new computer! – Slapout Jan 13 '09 at 03:14
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I go nowhere without puretext.exe. It's just a 28 Kb executable that gives you under Windows+V (or whatever key you want) what I would otherwise be doing quite often manually after hitting Ctrl+C somewhere:

  • Windows+R
  • N, O, T, E, P, A, D (if needed, often was still in my Run dialog...)
  • Enter
  • Ctrl+V
  • Ctrl+A
  • Ctrl+C
  • Alt+F4
  • N (for No)
  • Alt-Tab (correct number of times needed, if any...)
  • Ctrl+V

In other words: it pastes "pure text" from the clipboard, without any of the markup that might have been copied onto the clipboard with the text.

Any PC I work on for more than an hour - where I have permissions to get puretext.exe onto and running - I put it in C:\WINDOWS\, double-click it once, set it to autostart in its settings and always hide the icon in the task bar.

It is so worth it. ;-)

peSHIr
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  • I have no idea what this app does, even after reading your description. – Beska May 06 '09 at 19:34
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    It pastes text from the clipboard as plain text, without any markup. In other words: the same you would get if you opened Notepad, pasted into that, select everything, copy it again to the clipboard and then paste into the actual destination. I'll edit my reply to elaborate. – peSHIr May 19 '09 at 08:26
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MemTest if it's hardware troubleshooting?

Richard
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As a WPF/Silverlight developer I would add Kaxaml and MS Blend

Gordon Mackie JoanMiro
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Here's my list. All utilities are for MS Windows, tested on XP.

CSVed - editing comma seperated files
EasyCleaner - Registry cleaner, application unistaller 
FolderSize - Size of folders, displayed with nice bar charts
Foxit Reader - Fast & lightweight PDF reader
Fsplit - File splitter
GlovePIE - Advanced input scripting (mouse, keyboard, game controllers)
JkDefrag - Defragger
NiftyWindows - Bunch of window menagement features
PowerOff - Scheduling system actions 
Process Hacker - Advanced task manager
PSpad - Best free file editor
PyScripter - Best GUI for Python
Reflector - .NET application inspector
ResHacker - view and edit executable resources
Speq - best calculator, small and powerful
UniExtract - extracts about 95% of archives and installers
VLCplayer - video player with self-contained codecs
Wheeler - mousescroll without prior focusing 
WikidPad - personal wiki for knowledge storage
WinMerge - GUI diff tool
xint - ultra lightweight editor
XML Notepad 2007 - XML editor from M$ 
XYplorer - nice dualpane file explorer
zDump - similar to Spy++
Zzoom - onscreen magnifier
Josip
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I have ubuntu linux installed to my usb flash with: GIMP Eclipse NetBeans

SomeUser
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I keep my acme-sac (inferno-based vm) builds for all platforms I interact with - Win, Mac, Linux, BSD. That way I always have my preferred work environment with me. For Win, I also throw in cdb.exe so I can have a real debugger instead of that DevStudio monster.

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PortableApps as well. I played with a few Linux-on-a-sticks, including Slax (it's a great little distro!), but the computers at my school don't seem to allow booting from USB anymore :'(

I also managed to get Cygwin on my USB, but it's a little weird, and I don't use it often. Eclipse as well, but only if you absolutely need it, it runs slows as molasses.

HappyCodeMonkey
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The XamppLite Web-Server so I can be able to work and test any PHP, CGI or scripts wherever I go.

Andreas Grech
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Mine just has music, and my GTD projects. Oh, and a couple of games for those in-between times ;-)

0

PicPick for image capture and editing

AZ.
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I have a full install (persistency broke on the LiveUSB version) of Fedora 9 (Sulphur) on one partition (ext2 so Windows can't see it) with the following tools:

And on the other partition, my data and the following Windows tools:

EDIT: I now have Fedora 10. Slightly slower, and needs vga= for the new boot to work, but the new features make it worth it.

Lucas Jones
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One of my USB Flash drives has the books I bought in PDF format from Safari Online. The ability to carry ten or twenty books about .NET, HTML, CSS, SQL, Active Directory, Security, WPF, or whatever else I happen to have in there, and pull it up without breaking my back is PRICELESS.

Another has NUnit, TestDriven.NET, WinMerge, the scrollbar fix for VB6, AnkSVN, a copy of the C# specification, and a couple of homebrew tools.

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When I get around to it, I'm putting the Windows Home Server PC Recovery image on a USB drive. Not only is it nicer than CD for recovering a home server CD, but you can also boot to a CMD prompt or run disk manager.

I prefer not to cache copies of downloadable software, since downloading anew often brings the latest updates. The exception is software I have to jump through hoops to get (registration, etc.)

Jay Bazuzi
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For Windows:

  • PuTTY (PuTTY tray)
  • Xming - X11 server
  • tightvnc.exe

These let me access Linux systems where the real development tools live via SSH and VNC.

jtimberman
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Currently: Python + Python Stackless Lua JCreator ConTEXT

Most of my USB is made up of Installers/Source code though :)

0

I have to have Directory Opus on my USB drive. I use it primarily for the search feature, which is so much better than what Windows provides.

Also, Keepass, already mentioned here.

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If you have room for it, AutoPatcher (you run it on your PC to download all the windows updates available, then take it to their place and use it to patch their Windows installation).

0

A debuggin Tool or a Profiler.

Geek
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I can run Delphi5 on my USB, using some custom script to properly setup registry. It's pretty handy since it allow me to:

  1. Debug (Assembly or Delphi)
  2. Instantly create some mini native utility, or create some adhoc report for my user.
  3. Fine text editor
Sake
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If you are carrying around sensitive data, I would recommend an encryption tool like Toucan.

Other great portable apps can be found at portableapps.com.

jinsungy
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Gvim

LuRsT
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I would have to second Sean's recommendation for PortableApps, since it sounds from your example like you might be doing pc troubleshooting and not development work. PortableApps provides portable versions of a number of significant tools you might need that will run completely from a thumb drive, including Firefox (browser), Thunderbird (email), FileZilla (ftp), and Open Office (word processing, spreadsheet, database, etc.), 7-Zip (zip file management), etc. If you happen to be a .NET developer troubleshooting an application problem, you might want to check out SharpDevelop which will run completely from a thumb drive.

Rich Miller
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  • Rich, the example is just an example to get people thinking. I tend to do development work and client-side debugging off of a thumb drive at times. – rjzii May 07 '09 at 14:00
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Everything mentioned thus far is great.

However, if you're like me and tons of folks are asking you to deliver demons from their PC because they're not savvy users, then you'll also want to have a copy of a free virus protection software like AVG.

TheHolyTerrah
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