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I wish there was a tool to sandbox Windows applications; not primarily for security reasons but mostly because of the immense amount of trash left behind all ov

I wish there was a tool to sandbox Windows applications; not primarily for security reasons but mostly because of the immense amount of trash left behind all over %APPDATA% and other random disk locations, the registry, etc. I wish I could start a command line (terminal) that will virtualize the file system in a "workspace" such that any crap that would otherwise pollute my system drive ends up in a neat box on my "work" drive (I know there's a Windows Sandbox thing but that explicitly deletes everything on close, whereas I'd want to go back into that workspace later to continue work on the project).

TheDong 6y ago
Historically, thinapp[0] on windows has done this. I'm not certain if it still can do this, but it used to be able to. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_ThinApp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_ThinApp
ubercow13 6y ago
Have you looked at Sandboxie? I'm not sure what the best-maintained version is since it went open-source so I'll just point to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandboxie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandboxie
CodeHz 6y ago
I think we can achieve this through windows container(not docker, it won't support interactive GUI application), by using process isolation, most api have been implemented in container.dll(see the exported functions table!), but it is undocumented... There's some demos that using this API https://github.com/microsoft/BuildXL/blob/master/Public/Src/Demos/Demos.md https://github.com/microsoft/BuildXL/blob/master/Public/Src/...
- gigel82 6y ago
  That looks interesting, but ideally it would be something that works with multiple processes. Imagine opening a command prompt, launching vscode from it and doing a yarn/npm/nuget/pip install; this craps thousands of files for various "caches" and unconfigurable "install roots" and so on. I think a light-weight Docker for Windows would be great for this actually, but even a simple solution that builds on top of container.dll (or similar technology) to virtualize the file system would be very welcome.

TheDong 6y ago

Historically, thinapp[0] on windows has done this. I'm not certain if it still can do this, but it used to be able to. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_ThinApp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_ThinApp

ubercow13 6y ago

Have you looked at Sandboxie? I'm not sure what the best-maintained version is since it went open-source so I'll just point to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandboxie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandboxie

CodeHz 6y ago

I think we can achieve this through windows container(not docker, it won't support interactive GUI application), by using process isolation, most api have been implemented in container.dll(see the exported functions table!), but it is undocumented... There's some demos that using this API https://github.com/microsoft/BuildXL/blob/master/Public/Src/Demos/Demos.md https://github.com/microsoft/BuildXL/blob/master/Public/Src/...

gigel82 6y ago
That looks interesting, but ideally it would be something that works with multiple processes. Imagine opening a command prompt, launching vscode from it and doing a yarn/npm/nuget/pip install; this craps thousands of files for various "caches" and unconfigurable "install roots" and so on. I think a light-weight Docker for Windows would be great for this actually, but even a simple solution that builds on top of container.dll (or similar technology) to virtualize the file system would be very welcome.