NullSoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS) allows programmers to easily build automated installation programs for Windows. Many Windows programs use NSIS to install themselves.

If you cross-compile your Windows executables from a Linux host then you may be interested in running makensis natively. For a long time I ran the Windows makensis under WINE. However WINE is a bit cumbersome to run from a cron job because it normally requires X (the graphical display subsystem used on UNIX Systems).

Today I noticed that makensis will now mostly compile natively on POSIX compliant operating systems (such as Linux). By mostly I mean that some components require a Windows compiler (such as MinGW) even though the main executable builds natively under Linux.

What you need:

• WINE installed and working.
• MinGW installed as a cross compiler.
• GCC installed as a native Linux compiler.
• The latest CVS version of NSIS
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/nsis login
# There is no password, just press enter.
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/nsis co NSIS


How to do it:

1. cd NSIS
2. create a shell script named Source/exehead/bin2h
3. chmod a+x Source/exehead/bin2h
4. cd Source/exehead
5. cross-make
6. cd ..
7. make makensis
8. cd ..
9. cp -a . /usr/local/lib/makensis
10. rm -Rf /usr/local/lib/makensis/Source
11. create a shell script named /usr/local/bin/makensis to run your native version.
12. chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/makensis

Now you can run makensis natively on Linux...

$ makensis

MakeNSIS v2.01 - Copyright 1999-2004 Nullsoft, Inc.

You may download my native NSIS build for Linux made on 2004-07-08 under Fedora Core 2.