Launch NSIS when building with Visual Studio

Question

I have written a NSIS script for my project, and I would like to automatically create the setup file when I build the project. How can I do this with Visual Studio? Is there a way to pass parameters to the script? I mean, I would like VS to pass the Assembly Version to the script. Right now, I have to manually edit a line in the script

VIProductVersion 1.5.0.1

and I sometime forget to update it. Is there a way to automate the process?

As of today, 10 years later, I'm still only seeing commercial products in this space. — HackSlash, Sep 30 '22 at 21:38

Anders · Answer 1 · 2012-02-17T21:47:04.307

1

You can create defines and/or execute script instructions by using the /D and /X makensis parameters

NSIS can also read files with !searchparse

edited Feb 17 '12 at 21:47

answered Feb 17 '12 at 21:34

Anders

97,548
12
110
164

Thanks for the /D and /X parameters, they where exactly what I needed, but how do I make VS output the Assembly version, so that I can pass it to makensis.exe? I was trying to get the version string from the file attributes of the project executable using the Powershell, but maybe there is a simpler method – Pincopallino Feb 18 '12 at 08:44

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 03 '22 at 16:15

There are two questions here.

Q1. Launch NSIS when building with Visual Studio?

A1. Make a Post-build event that runs makensis on the .nsi file:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\NSIS\makensis.exe" "$(ProjectDir)\NSISInstaller\Installer.nsi"

Q2. Pass the Assembly Version to the post build event?

A2. Answered here: Determine assembly version during a post-build event

Combined solution should be:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\NSIS\makensis.exe" "$(ProjectDir)\NSISInstaller\Installer.nsi" /DPRODUCT_VERSION=$(AssemblyVersion)

Launch NSIS when building with Visual Studio

2 Answers2