Introduction
This information is up-to-date as of May 8, 2018
This came from the live Q&A and I already posted in both Discord and Facebook, but I figure it’s useful, so I’ll post it in all 3 places! It’s rooted from the question “Can Godot run from a USB Stick” by Ari in Discord.
Default Configuration Storage
Godot by default stores your configuration files, and downloaded templates in effectively the following locations.
Windows:
%APPDATA%
Linux:
~/.local/share
Mac:
~/Library/Application Support
What You Can Do
Godot has a “self contained” mode, this tells Godot to store any templates, or configurations in a folder named editor_data located at the root of the location where the godot binary is.
For example, if your Godot binary is in if it’s C:\Godot, you’ll get a new folder in C:\Godot, and basically equivalent on Linux and Mac just different paths
This is where “USB Stick Usage” comes in, because Godot has this feature, you can effectively (though not recommended) run Godot in a “Portable” manner, all you need to do is create a file named ._sc_ or _sc_ depending on the platform you run in the same folder as the godot binary.
Ways To Do It
The following are some command line methods to create the file you need to do this.
Note that you should be navigated to the directory/path where your godot binary is as these files must be in that location for this to work.
Mac users, see the section titled "Caveat About Macs"
Windows Command Prompt:
nul > _sc_
OR
echo .>_sc_
Unix/Linux/Mac
touch ._sc_
Caveat about Macs
The ._sc_ actually has to be in the same location as the binary file, this technically means inside the .app file. You can navigate into the .app file as though it is folders though via terminal.
From where you have the .app saved type the following
cd Godot.app/Contents/MacOS/
If you are using the Mono edition on Mac the path will be closer to this.
cd Godot_v3.0.3-stable_mono_osx64.app/Contents/MacOS/
Note that if you rename the .app file this will be different. This also means that the editor_data folder will get created inside the .app file, as such the .app file will grow in size if you do this.
Official Documentation
The documentation/reference from the Godot documentation page is available at this link:
http://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.0/development/compiling/packaging_godot.html
Side Notes
Remember that Godot project files actually are always contained in a single directory. Wherever your Godot project file itself is stored.
This effectively means that not only can Godot itself be configured to be portable, your Godot projects can come with it, so long as you have enough disk capacity.