NSIS installer for Windows #474
Conversation
Having MSYS2 packages is nice, but there are those weird Windows devs who insist on building their software using native Windows tools like Microsoft Visual Studio instead of building everything in MSYS. There are also other environments like Node.js which insist on using Visual Studio toolchain on Windows. Let's provide them with a way to install Themis into system so that they can build their software the way they want to. NullSoft Scriptable Install System is a venerable and straightforward installation toolkit. Moreover, it's available in MSYS so it's very easy to integrate into our build system. Provide an initial script for building an installer and a makefile target "nsis_installer" which produce "InstallThemis.exe" in the build directory. Piggyback on the "make install" target to figure out what files need to be distributed. Include our licensing information as well. Alsso include MSYS2 runtime libraries which are necessary to use Themis outside of MSYS2.
| VIAddVersionKey "CompanyName" "Cossack Labs Limited" | ||
| VIAddVersionKey "LegalCopyright" "(c) Cossack Labs Limited" | ||
| VIAddVersionKey "FileDescription" "Themis library installer" | ||
| VIAddVersionKey "FileVersion" "0.11.2" |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
we need add to our checklist for releases where we will need to update version. maybe place here some placeholder and set correct version before using this file?
| @makensis Themis.nsi | ||
| @rm -r "$(BIN_PATH)/install" | ||
|
|
||
| FORCE: |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
This empty target forces the installer to be rebuilt when make nsis_installer is run. Otherwise make sees that InstallThemis.exe already exists in the build directory and does not need to be updated.
Ideally, we should not be calling make install recursively. The nsi script could copy the binaries from the build directory and header files from the repo. This will allow us to accurately track the dependencies for make so that repeated make nsis_installer runs will rebuild the binaries and the installer only when necessary.
However, that would mean that we'd have to maintain two separate lists of installed files. Recently we have unified RPM and DEB packaging to use make install instead of their own lists. I think that we'd be better off just using make install everywhere.
Since NSIS scripts are Windows- and MSYS-specific, produce a nice error message if the users try running "make nsis_installer" in non-MSYS environment (e.g., on their macBook, or in a regular terminal on Windows without proper environment configuration).
Having MSYS2 packages is nice, but there are those weird Windows devs who insist on building their software using native Windows tools like Microsoft Visual Studio instead of building everything in MSYS. There are also other environments like Node.js which insist on using Visual Studio toolchain on Windows. Let's provide them with a way to install Themis into system so that they can build their software the way they want to.
NullSoft Scriptable Install System is a venerable and straightforward installation toolkit. Moreover, it's available in MSYS so it's very easy to integrate into our build system. Provide an initial script for building an installer and a makefile target
nsis_installerwhich produces InstallThemis.exe in the build directory. Piggyback on themake installtarget to figure out what files need to be distributed. Include our licensing information as well. Also include MSYS2 runtime libraries which are necessary to use Themis outside of MSYS2.We get these cool Win95-style installers as a reward: