Building NSIS
Appendix G: Building NSIS
NSIS version 2.07 introduced a new build system, based on SCons. The build system can build the entire NSIS package so there is no longer need to build it project by project. It allows building using several simultaneous jobs, installation without an installer on both Windows and POSIX and easy compilation with debugging symbols.
G.1 Building in General
Source code is available in SVN and as a separate package with every NSIS distribution.
To build NSIS Python and SCons must be installed. Currently, the supported version of SCons is version 0.96.93. Any version of Python above 1.6 is supported.
To build, open a console, change the working directory to the root directory of NSIS and type scons. That's it. For example:
C:\>cd dev\nsis C:\dev\nsis>scons scons: Reading SConscript files ... Using Microsoft tools configuration Checking for main() in C library gdi32... (cached) yes Checking for main() in C library user32... (cached) yes Checking for main() in C library version... (cached) yes Checking for main() in C library pthread... (cached) no Checking for main() in C library stdc++... (cached) no Checking for main() in C library iconv... (cached) no Checking for main() in C library libiconv... (cached) no scons: done reading SConscript files. scons: Building targets ... ...
To install the built files, type:
scons PREFIX="C:\Program Files\NSIS" install
To create an installer (only on Windows), type:
scons dist-installer
To create a distribution zip file, type:
scons dist-zip
To create both, type:
scons dist
To get a complete list of options that the build system has to offer, type:
scons -h
To get a complete list of options SCons has to offer, type:
scons -H
G.2 Building on Windows
SCons will automatically detect Microsoft Visual C++. If you are looking for a free compiler to compile NSIS, we recommend Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition.
When using the Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003, add MSTOOLKIT=yes to the build command line:
scons MSTOOLKIT=yes
In case of errors about the compiler or the Platform SDK not being found, use:
set MSSDK=C:\Path\To\Platform SDK set VCToolkitInstallDir=C:\Path\To\VCToolkit scons MSTOOLKIT=yes
The open-source MinGW can also be used to for building, but this results in noticeably larger installers. Borland C++ or Open Watcom C/C++ might also work, but haven't been tested.
To compile the documentation as a CHM file, hhc.exe must be in the PATH. It is available as part of HTML Help Workshop.
To build NSIS Menu, install wxWidgets 2.8, create an environment variable named WXWIN containing the path to the installation directory of wxWidgets, run Contrib\NSIS Menu\wx\wxbuild.bat and build NSIS as usual.
Important notes for Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 users: The latest Platform SDK must be installed before building. Because of flaws in the libraries distributed with Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0, not installing the Platform SDK will result in crashes when using the CopyFiles command. See this forum topic for more information. Installing the Processor Pack is highly recommended to decrease the size of the installer overhead.
G.3 Building on POSIX
As of NSIS 2.01, the compiler, makensis, also compiles on POSIX platforms. POSIX platforms include Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X and others. Since the generated installer will eventually run on Windows, a cross-compiler is needed in order to compile them.
If no cross-compiler is available, use the following:
scons SKIPSTUBS=all SKIPPLUGINS=all SKIPUTILS=all SKIPMISC=all
NSIS_CONFIG_CONST_DATA_PATH=no PREFIX=/path/to/extracted/zip
install-compiler
scons NSIS_CONFIG_CONST_DATA_PATH=no PREFIX=/path/to/extracted/zip
/path/to/extracted/zip/LibraryLocal
This should only build makensis and install it to the directory where a precompiled package, such as the nightly build or a zipped release version (nsis-x.xx.zip), is extracted. Note that the in order for this to work, the precompiled package must be compiled using the exact same sources as makensis. In particular, Source\exehead\config.h, the options passed to scons and Source\exehead\fileform.h must be identical. Nightly builds and zipped release versions are built with the default options.
Currently, the Call, Get and Debug functions of the System plug-in can't be built using GCC, but only with MSVC. When building with GCC, either download a MSVC-compiled version or write your own plugin that calls the functions you need. You can skip building the System plugin using the following flags:
scons SKIPPLUGINS=System
To build a native version of NSIS Menu, install wxWidgets 2.8 and build as usual. wx-config must be in the path.
G.4 Nightly Builds
There is no need to manually build the latest SVN version for Windows. A nightly build is available. The nightly build is automatically generated every night, using the latest version of the source code from SVN. There is no official nightly build for other platforms.