NSIS

Nullsoft (SuperPiMP|Scriptable) Install System

• SuperPiMP™ technology (so advanced, so amazing, we won't even tell you what it is).
• Generates self contained, win32 executable installer.
• Uninstall support (installer can automagically generate an uninstaller)
• Optional installer self-verification using a CRC32.
• Compression choices of zlib or bzip2 based compression. The installer can compress everything together, or individually.
• Approximately 20-40k overhead over compressed data size (depending on features enabled, compression algorithm, and so on - the default options are ~35k).
• Ability to display a license agreement.
• Ability to detect destination directory from the registry, and let the user override (or not let them)
• Customizable appearance (background, icons, text, checkmarks)
• Multiple install configurations (usually Minimal, Typical, Full), and custom configuration
• Plug-in system (includes plug-ins for generic dialog construction and user interaction, as well as HTTP downloading)
• Installers can be as large as 2GB (theoretically -- when building on Win9x the limit seems to be around 500MB, however building on NT then installing on Win9x works with larger sizes)
• Optional Silent mode for automated installations
• Installers have their own VMs that let you write code that can support:
  • File extraction (with configurable overwrite parameters)
  • File/directory copying, renaming, deletion
  • DLL loading (ActiveX control registration/deregistration, extension DLL calling, etc)
  • Executable execution (shell execute and wait options)
  • Shortcut creation
  • Registry key reading/setting/enumerating/deleting
  • INI file reading/writing
  • Generic text file reading/writing
  • Directory scanning
  • Powerful string and integer manipulation
  • Window finding based on class name or title (for is-application-running detection)
  • Window message sending.
  • User interaction with MessageBox.
  • Branching, comparisons, etc.
  • Error checking.
  • Installer behaviour commands (such as show/hide/wait/etc)
  • User functions in script
  • Callback functions that let you customize the way the installer behaves from script.
  • Macros in script
  • A primitive preprocessor
  • A lovely coding experience with elements of PHP and assembly (includes 20 general purpose variables, a stack, real flow control, etc)
  • More
• Completely free for any use. See license.

• Documentation: here (also included with the installer)
• Version history: here (includes downloads of past versions)
• List of NSIS users: here
• If you want to talk to other developers who use NSIS, you can use the NSIS Forum on Winamp.com.
• We made a php script that generates template .NSI files. Check it out here.

Current version: 1.98 (updated 4.28.02) [past versions]
Download: nsis198.exe (498k)
Special treat: standalone zip2exe installer (includes optimized makensis for zip2exe as well)

• v1.98 (1.97 was a development version or something)
  • Made SectionIn support more section indices. May break old scripts though (since 12 is interpreted as 12 not 1 and 2 now), but the compiler should at least give error rather than fail silently.
  • Added config.h option: NSIS_CONFIG_CRC_ANAL
  • Made Sleep instruction not print "Wait..." to output.
  • Updated to MakensisW 1.4
  • Updated exdll.dpr (Delphi port)
  • Added LogText and LogSet commands
  • Reworked heavily the section system.
  • - Added SectionSetText, SectionSetFlags, SectionGetFlags, and SectionGetText.
  • - Added .onSelChange callback.
  • - Added RO parameter for SectionIn
  • Made size estimation display nicer and reorganized a little bit.
  • Added SetShellVarContext instruction.
  • Added parameter support for !macro and !insertmacro.
• 1.96
  • Removed a few documentation errors (happy now, Alex??)
  • Updated to the latest makensisw.exe (sexy!)
  • Fixed a resource.h issue (thanks Robert Rainwater)
  • Fixed compilation bug when logging enabled (thanks Fritz Elfert)
  • Fixed bug in Call when calling a variable location from uninstall (thanks to Fritz Elfert again)
• 1.95
  • Fixed section divider bug (thanks to Robert Rainwater)
  • Included a modified version of MakeNSISW (thanks to Robert Rainwater)
  • Made compiler's output line display full path (for the wrapper)
• 1.94
  • Fixed whole compression + small uninstaller bug.
• 1.93
  • Made !insertmacro work within macros and in command mode.
  • Removed stupid CRC padding on tiny installers (also fixes whole+CRC+tinyinstaller bug).
  • Other cleanups to both build output and exehead.
  • Zip2exe v0.16 (yay)
• 1.92
  • Fixed bug in InstallOptions (State= empty on checkboxes causing problems)
  • Included WinMessages.NSH from KiCHiK
  • Added NSIS_COMPRESS_BZIP2_LEVEL option to config.h
  • Made compiler fflush() more often.
  • Made zip2exe use Miguel Garrido's code to embed the console instance of makensis (well, modified it a bit too).
  • Made zip2exe allow selection of makensis.exe (so you can do makensis-bz2.exe if you want), and have lots of other improvements.
• 1.91
  • Made GetFileTime handle locked files better (thanks Dave Bau).
  • Cleaned up exec.c some by making file_exists() return metadata about the file.
  • Removed any versioning issues with the multiple 1.90s (since I'm stupid and make multiple versions with the same number).
• 1.90
  • Included Install Options DLL instead of the classic install options.
  • Added GetTempFileName instruction.
  • Included Peter Windridge's Delphi ExDLL port (contrib\exdll\exdll.dpr)
  • Added Quit instruction (almost instantly quits installer).
  • Added .onNextPage, .onPrevPage, and un.onNextPage callbacks.
  • Dave Laundon's new onNextPage/onPrevPage style.
  • Support for bzip2 as well as zlib for compression (see config.h - the default distribution includes makensis.exe (classic support) and makensis-bz2.exe (new style, can make smaller installers))
  • Support for compression that spans the entire installer (see config.h - the makensis-bz2.exe uses this by default) -- expense of temporary file required.
  • Included contrib\nsisdl (thanks, Yaroslav - updated again)
  • Began making more install strings changeable (see lang.h). Soon (for 2.0 hopefully) we will have full multilanguage (multiple languages per installer) support.
  • Fun command line updates.

NSIS tries to be a scriptable win32 installer/uninstaller system that doesn't suck and isn't huge.

NSIS exists largely because of the need to distribute Winamp.

In the beginning, Winamp was distributed as a simple .ZIP file (see Winamp 1.0).
Eventually, Winzip was nice enough to give us a license to the Winzip self extractor (see Winamp 2.0)

The self extracting ZIP file became too restrictive, so we started using a custom developed installer. This installer was generated using a combination of "bin2h", batch files, and Visual C++. To add a new file into the distribution, or to have the installer do something new on install, it required writing quite a bit of code. (see Winamp 2.5)

Another thing we needed was a good way to distribute Winamp plug-ins. The solution: PiMP (Plug-In Mini Packager). PiMP was actually based on the custom installer (though was a lot simpler and removed a lot of code), but stored the data and strings that were unique to that installer in a block at the end of the file. It was small and simple, allowing the simple functions of detecting where Winamp was installed and extracting files. The limitations of PiMP were that it could only extract files, and it was designed for small installers (i.e. an 8mb installer would take 8mb of memory).

NSIS, which stands for "Nullsoft SuperPiMP Installation System" or "Nullsoft Scriptable Installation System" or whatever you want, is based on PiMP but is designed to be much more flexible. NSIS creates installers that are capable of installing, uninstalling, setting system settings, extracting files, etc. Pretty much anything. All with the minimum of overhead- they don't bother decompressing themselves three different times, telling the user to "please wait". They get to the point and get the job done.

In order to make NSIS even more powerful than it already is, we have released it under an open source license (it is actually the zlib/libpng license, which is approved by opensource.org). What does this mean? It means that if you want to add the functionality you need to NSIS, you can. It means if you want to make your own custom version of NSIS (or some product that includes NSIS), and sell it, you can. Or if you just want to distribute your software using NSIS, you sure as hell can.

The result of all of this is an installation system for win32 that lets you compile nice little scripts (which are text files, no wizards to slow you down) into tiny installers. Many features are supported, and the whole thing just works pretty damn well (at least, we think).