PortableApps Repo & Package Management

I have an idea for a PortableApps repo and package manager but not being a coder, I thought I'd lay it out in the hopes that someone could run with it, in whatever way makes sense coding wise. It's a solution to a problem.

I find that PortableApps (Windows) on a USB thumbdrive is very handy when forced to use Windows, unfortunately it can be awkward to keep those apps updated if you go for weeks or months between needing to plug them in. We need the *nix package management idea to come into play here.

Currently PortableApps and the individual application exe files need to be downloaded individually, and the installer wizard run individually, that's after checking each one individually to see if there is a new version. Is it possible to have some sort of repo that watches the PortableApps mirrors for the latest versions of each app to add them to a repo, then a standalone installable GUI run from either Windows or Linux in perhaps Python that acts like a package manager.

When you want to update your PortableApps thumbdrive, or check if there are updates, it'd be a simple case of running the GUI, plugging in your USB thumbdrive. (In Linux) It'd mount itself into /home/username/PortableApps, and possibly create a fake F:\ like WINE. The GUI would be scanning for the PortableApps .exe and detect the drive when it's plugged in, scan the apps installed on it, including their version numbers. You'd resync the repo just as you'd do in Synaptic or any other *nix package manager, where it'd list "new in repo" as well as "upgradable". You'd be able to select "mark all upgrades", then "apply" where it'd download them all in a batch and install them all in a batch.

Surely that'd be a much easier way to keep PortableApps current. The point of PortableApps is to be able to take applications including your personal settings with you, because you can't install them locally on the Windows PC you're using. Often it's a work or college owned PC with strict IT policies, or it could be a mate's PC who won't let you install. Or it could be personal email profiles that you don't want installed on anyone else's PC regardless. Being a portable solution it can easily be weeks or months between uses, and they're not like live CDs where any exploit that happens to get in on that session won't be stored; these are persistent storage.

I have no idea how possible this would be either to apply a repo & package management system to a Windows system, nor if Linux could install exe files to a PortableApps thumbdrive. There may well be technical barriers to both suggestions. I am thinking that the portable versions of apps simply have any necessary .dll's included somewhere inside the folder, which in theory means it's a simple copy and paste to F:\PortableApps\Firefox\ or whatever.

This solution applies only to PortableApps which is just a platform for portable applications running on Windows from a USB thumbdrive, there are plenty of others which also work great but are not part of the PortableApps family. The repo system could aso be used to install and upgrade those too, like a PortableApps repo and a third party repo, and the user can enable or disable it if they choose.