NSIS - Nullsoft Scriptable Install System

[Mnemonic]

Hi KiCHiK, thank you for stopping by,

NSIS (and probably InnoSetup too) uses a data block optimizer. This optimizer makes sure the same file won't be compressed twice into the data block. Instead, it searches for that file in the data that have already been added and if found, just points to it instead of adding it again.

I'm not sure about InnoSetup, see below...

A newer and higher scripting language is planned for NSIS 3

I'm REALLY glad to hear that


I did a little experiment and tried to compress the WME package using various tools (of course, it's not completely fair to compare installers and specialized compression utilities, but still...).
The package consists mainly of executables and BMP images (and a 3MB compressed CHM help file).
I used the solid compression mode in both WinRAR (3.20) and 7-zip (2.30beta32)

Uncompressed	38.195.864 bytes
InnoSetup	14.208.458 bytes
NSIS zlib	10.935.232 bytes
NSIS bzip2	10.163.711 bytes
WinRAR	8.230.820 bytes
7zip	7.251.109 bytes

I was surprised there's very little difference between the two NSIS compression modes.

[kichik]

Yep, that's me

Currently, the newer scripting language and NSIS 3 itself are just an idea. There are no written plans yet.

I can also add that version 2.0 final will have LZMA support (a LZ variant created by Igor Pavlov, the author of 7zip).

Indeed, if everything turns out right you will be able to use LZMA compression in NSIS 2 final.

[odnorf]

The latest development build of NSIS has LZMA support.  

[SBOVIS]

Hi I have not used NSIS but have used INNOSETUP the problem I found with INNOSETUP is that it takes ages for it to install my project.


And while it is even waiting to start the windows cursor is an arrow not an hour glass etc.

My project is 600mb in size but still thought that the initial install screen would come up in seconds rather than minutes?


Anyone else had this issue? any ideas how to overcome this?

[Jerrot]

Hey,

My project is 600mb in size...

No idea about your problem , but...
 
600 MB??! Whew, what sizes it up, is your project THAT big or are there uncompressed parts like Bitmaps, Movies, WAV files ?

And if not - when will we see a demo?