NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) is a professional open source system to create Windows installers. It is designed to be as small and flexible as possible and is therefore very suitable for internet distribution.
Being a user’s first experience with your product, a stable and reliable installer is an important component of succesful software. With NSIS you can create such installers that are capable of doing everything that is needed to setup your software.
NSIS is script-based and allows you to create the logic to handle even the most complex installation tasks. Many plug-ins and scripts are already available: you can create web installers, communicate with Windows and other software components, install or update shared components and more.
NSIS is created to be small, fast and efficient. While other installers often add hundreds of kilobytes or several megabytes to your installer data, a full-featured NSIS installer has an overhead of only 34 KB.
You can create a single installer that is compatible with Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista.
You can choose between three different integrated compression methods (ZLib, BZip2, LZMA). The new LZMA compression gives better results than any other common compression method. You don’t have to use large self-extracting archive modules or other applications. The compression support is included in the 34 KB overhead.
Unlike other systems that can only generate installers based on a list of files and registry keys, NSIS has a powerful scripting language. This script language is designed for installers and has commands that help you to perform many installation tasks. You can easily add custom logic and handle different upgrades, version checks and more.
For standard installers or as a starting point for more complex ones, you can use one of the available script generation tools.
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