Makensis-cli NPM

makensis-cli

CLI for the makensis wrapper on Node

Why?

Admittedly, there are only few reasons why you would want to use a wrapper for an already existing CLI application.

Pros:

seamless Wine integration
Unix-like command-line parameters
normalized output
optional JSON output

Cons:

redundancy

Prerequisites

Make sure that NSIS is properly installed with makensis in your PATH environmental variable.

On non-Windows platforms, you can usually install NSIS with your package manager:

# Debian
sudo apt-get -t experimental install nsis

# Red Hat
sudo dnf install nsis

# Homebrew
brew install nsis

# MacPorts
port install nsis

Alternatively, you can setup NSIS in your Wine environment. Keep in mind that Wine writes standard streams while running makensis, so additional parsing of the compiler output might be necessary.

Installation

$ npm install makensis-cli --global

Usage

Sub-Commands

hdrinfo – prints information about what options makensis was compiled with (Aliases: f|flags|i|info)
version – prints the makensis version and exits (Alias: v)
cmdhelp [item] – prints out help for 'item', or lists all commands

Options

Running nsis --help lists all available options:

Usage: nsis [command] [file.nsi] [options]

Options:

  -V, --version                  output the version number
  -i, --input-charset <string>   ACP|OEM|CP#|UTF8|UTF16<LE|BE>
  -j, --json                     prints output as JSON
  -p, --pause                    pauses after execution
  -o, --output-charset <string>  ACP|OEM|CP#|UTF8[SIG]|UTF16<LE|BE>[BOM]
  -P, --ppo                      preprocess to stdout/file
  -S, --safe-ppo                 preprocess to stdout/file
  -v, --verbose <n>              verbosity where n is 4=all,3=no script,2=no info,1=no warnings,0=none
  -w, --wine                     use Wine to run makenis
  -x, --strict                   treat warnings as errors
  -h, --help                     output usage information

Examples:

Let's start with makensis returning its version

$ nsis version

# Result:
#
# v3.02.1

We can also return this as JSON

$ nsis version --json

# Result:
#
# {
#   "version": "3.02.1"
# }

Try again for makensis on Wine

$ nsis version --json --wine

# Result:
#
# {
#   "version": "3.01"
# }

In the following steps we're going to need a demo script, so let's create one. Take special note of the !warning inside the section.

$ printf "OutFile demo.exe\n\nSection\n!warning\nSectionEnd" > demo.nsi

Compile the script

$ nsis demo.nsi

# Result (omitted):
#
# EXE header size:               36352 / 37888 bytes
# Install code:                    399 / 1999 bytes
# Install data:                      0 / 0 bytes
# CRC (0x027F605B):                  4 / 4 bytes
# Total size:                    36755 / 39891 bytes (92.1%)
# 1 warning:
#   !warning:  (demo.nsi:4)

Compile again, but only display warnings and errors

$ nsis demo.nsi --verbose 2

# Result:
#
# warning: !warning:  (demo.nsi:4)
# 1 warning:
#   !warning:  (demo.nsi:4)

Complie with strict settings, so our little !warning will be treated as an error.

$ nsis demo.nsi --verbose 2 --strict

# Result:
#
# Exit Code 1
# Error: warning treated as error

Let's output the above as JSON

$ nsis demo.nsi --verbose 2 --strict --json

# Result:
#
# {
#   "status": 1,
#   "stdout": "warning: !warning:  (demo.nsi:4)",
#   "stderr": "Error: warning treated as error"
# }