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Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS) is a script-driven Windows installation system with minimal overhead backed by Nullsoft, the creators of Winamp. NSIS has risen to popularity as a widely used alternative to commercial products like InstallShield. more...

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NSIS is released under a combination of free software licences, primarily the licence of zlib/libpng, thus making NSIS free software.

History

NSIS was created to distribute Winamp. It is based on a previous Nullsoft product, PiMP (plugin Mini Packager), and is also known as SuperPiMP. After version 2.0a0, the project was moved to SourceForge where developers outside of Nullsoft started working on it on a regular basis. NSIS 2.0 was released approximately two years later.

NSIS version 1 is in many ways similar to the classic Windows Installer, but it is more easily scriptable and supports more compression formats. NSIS version 2 has a new streamlined graphical user interface and supports LZMA compression, multiple languages, and an easy plugin system.

POSIX

Version 2.01 was the first version to compile on POSIX platforms out of the box. This allows cross-compilation of Windows installers on Linux and FreeBSD without the usage of Wine. Currently, the only supported hardware platform is x86.

Concepts

Script

The NSIS compiler program makensis compiles scripts like the following example into executable installation programs. Each line in the script contains a single command.

Modern User Interface

Version 2.0 introduced a new optional streamlined graphical user interface called Modern UI (MUI). The MUI has a wizard-like interface. It supports a welcome page, finish page, language selection dialog, description area for components, and greater customization options than the old user interface.

Plugins

NSIS can be extended with plugins that can communicate with the installer. Plugins can be written in C, C++, and Delphi, and can be used to perform installation tasks or extend the installer interface. A plugin can be called with a single line of NSIS code.

Several plugins come with the NSIS package that permit the installer to display a splash screen, display a custom page, display an image on the background, download files from a website, perform mathematical operations, patch files and more.

Other plugins are available online, including ZipDLL, and a Python plugin.

Read more at Wikipedia.org