NSIS 2.46 - is this the last?

[JeronimoColon]

Just a quick question but first,

I've been using NSIS for years now and always recommend it to anyone who will listen but I've notice the last maintenance release was 2.46 and that was over a year ago.

Is NSIS being sunsetted? Will their be a 3.0? Or is something else entirely going on and I'm just out of the loop or something?

Thank you.

jc3

[Anders]

Unicode support is/was merged in, it still has issues so no release

[iponomarev]

Yeah, the same question worried me. We have been actively using NSIS for several years, and the unusually long break in releases looked very suspicious ("do we have to start looking for another installer platform??..") so it is very good news that the new version of NSIS is being developed!

Unicode support would be highly appreciated by us, because we do have some issues with Russian language on machines with non-Russian locale. Hope to see the new release this year at least!

[ZmAn3]

unicodes no fun just give me more controls and events for nsdialogs

[T.Slappy]

I personally do not like when new versions come out very often.
Every time I have to check al features by myself and modify/rebuild my Graphical Installer with the very latest version.
E.g. if new version comes out every month it is fine, but if more versions appear that's bad

[DrO]

*cough* automated tests *cough*

-daz

[kichik]

In his defense, there aren't really any testing frameworks for NSIS yet. nsUnit anyone?

[DrO]

true though even without something proper, just a simple check for unexpected values should be simple to have in a 'test' script. isn't like the script can be adjusted to do a psuedo self-validation (especially if users like T.Slappy are probably doing it all manually).

-daz

[Yathosho]

a service release would be nice, 2.46.1 or anything like that. fixing the issues with windows 7 context menu, updating some of the includesand maybe add some more, translations, etc.

[andy11252]

Or just an update to the New page to let people know about on going development. This is a great tool, I think people are just worried it was no longer being supported.

Keep up the good work.

[Anders]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/nsis/ right there on the main page: "Last Update: 10 hours ago" Not really sure what kind of update that is, but if you go to http://nsis.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/nsis/ you can see, last commit; 3 days

[seg_telltale]

Originally Posted by Anders

http://sourceforge.net/projects/nsis/ right there on the main page: "Last Update: 10 hours ago" Not really sure what kind of update that is, but if you go to http://nsis.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/nsis/ you can see, last commit; 3 days

I'm sorry, but that doesn't show the project is still active to anyone who isn't an active NSIS developer.

The website needs to illustrate to audiences who are not active NSIS developers that the work is still going on. Especially when the website doesn't highlight links directly to the SF project -- only a small footer image/link.

To illustrate the current activity beyond releases, there needs to be some form of activity blotter on the front page, just as there's a blotter for forums.

What would be more helpful is a statement on the progress of moving NSIS to Unicode. The front page can be short and sweet with the statement. A bonus if it linked to a new page which illustrated what the roadmap to Unicode is. Frankly, I have no idea what the status is. Again, lack of communication unless you're already in "the know".

[Anders]

Nobody really knows, it's been months since anyone did any work that would get us closer to a release.

You don't have to be a developer to just check the project page, and without a official schedule there is nothing to really put on the homepage.

[bsul]

Originally Posted by kichik

In his defense, there aren't really any testing frameworks for NSIS yet. nsUnit anyone?

An automatic test framework would be nice!

[Yathosho]

i liked the 2.0 beta days, with a daily snapshot easy to download for everybody. just saying.

[Anders]

It's not like there has been 0 code submitted to svn, but the nightly build service is broken for some reason, maybe related to the recent SF changes

[azerger]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullsoft

[mrjohn]

So is it true,the project is going to death?

[T.Slappy]

Definitely no!
However development is slowed down in these days NSIS is great product and still the best free [open-source] install system!

[MSG]

Project is dead in the sense that no new releases have been made in a long time. Project is very much alive in the sense that tech support and further development of plugins etc is as strong as it ever was.

The dead part is worrying, though. I guess we'll need some new hardcore coders to step up and continue development, if we ever want to see a new release of NSIS. Those aren't easy to find.

[mrjohn]

Thank you very much for your clarifications!

[kalverson]

Originally Posted by MSG

Project is dead in the sense that no new releases have been made in a long time. Project is very much alive in the sense that tech support and further development of plugins etc is as strong as it ever was.

The dead part is worrying, though. I guess we'll need some new hardcore coders to step up and continue development, if we ever want to see a new release of NSIS. Those aren't easy to find.

What happened to the original hardcore codes then?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

There has been a new Unicode NSIS release shortly:
http://code.google.com/p/unsis/downloads/list

Also: NSIS works very good and very reliably for me. Features missing in the "core" of NSIS can be added easily by plug-in's. So why are you crying for a new release? Is there actually any issue with core NSIS that would make a new release mandatory? IMHO the most important shortcoming of current NSIS is the lack of Unicode support, but Unicode NSIS resolves that issue. Even most plug-in's now have a Unicode version. And I think in the 'trunk' version (basis for a possible future release) there also is Unicode support now...

Originally Posted by kalverson

What happened to the original hardcore codes then?

They got a job? Or a wife? They simply have other priorities/interests now? Who knows...

[MSG]

Originally Posted by LoRd_MuldeR

IMHO the most important shortcoming of current NSIS is the lack of Unicode support, but Unicode NSIS resolves that issue.

It would if it'd be official. Currently the online documentation pretends the unicoded trunk already resists as a stable release, while in reality this is not the case.

[Anders]

Check http://sourceforge.net/projects/nsis...vent_type=code and you will see that the code is not dead, but there are no must have features that have been added post 2.46 IIRC so pushing out a new (ansi) release has not been done.

The devs also spend a bit of time helping people on the forum, IRC and removing spam from the wiki etc...

[logue]

As far as the source, none of the old code is still being used for compression.
For example, plans to have the ability to compress or LZMA2?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Any particular reason why LZMA2 is required?

AFAIK version 2 of LZMA is better suited for multi-threading, but actually gives worse compression than the original LZMA.

As NSIS installers only decompress and LZMA 1 already is damn fast at decompression, I don't see much use for LZMA 2 in NSIS...

(The only thing it could speed-up would be building the installer - at the cost of bigger installer size)

[logue]

For files like images, get benefits like LZMA2.
LZMA2 thing is even.

I feel like the compression code seems outdated...

lzma -> 4.43 (current 9.20)
bzip2 -> 1.0 (current 1.0.6)
zlib -> 1.1.3 (current 1.2.5)

Lzma in particular, has been optimized for speed in version 4.57 and 4.58.
Not to use the new code, Is there any reason?

[DrO]

because the implementations which are in NSIS were / are custom versions for keeping the exe head size down and to better work for the needs of what NSIS was trying to achieve when they were added - it's not just a straight change of the library to upgrade it.

-daz

[mrjohn]

Hi,There is any news about NSIS 3 release ?

thanks

[Anders]

Originally Posted by mrjohn

Hi,There is any news about NSIS 3 release ?

I play around with some code once in a while, hopefully we will get there at some point.

[mrjohn]

Thanks for the answer Anders !

[GenRabbit]

Anychance it will get support for Filepath+filename over 256(260) chars?
See more and more software supports it nowadays.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by GenRabbit

Anychance it will get support for Filepath+filename over 256(260) chars?
See more and more software supports it nowadays.

Probably not real support, I don't think shellexecute etc supports it. You should be able to add the prefix on your own to SetOutPath, CreateDirectory, FileOpen and Exec/ExecWait.

[Brummelchen]

Originally Posted by GenRabbit

Anychance it will get support for Filepath+filename over 256(260) chars?
See more and more software supports it nowadays.

that limit is set from ntfs - what you mean are UNC path those can exceed.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Brummelchen

that limit is set from ntfs - what you mean are UNC path those can exceed.

No, the NTFS limit is 32k (for the total path and 255 per element) but to use such paths you need to use the \\?\ prefix (Not everything it the shell supports this but most of the low-level file functions do. You also lose relative paths support...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS#Limitations

[GenRabbit]

The Wiki says 32768 UTF-16 in NT Kernel. Says nothing about UNC.

[Abu Abdullah]

Hi,

I have seen 64 bit port of NSIS on:
https://bitbucket.org/dgolub/nsis64

and I'm already using Unicode port of it:
http://www.scratchpaper.com/

Is there any road map for these two features in the main stream code. In addition, regular updates are stopped since 2009 even though the forum is active. I would appreciate if someone can highlight the situation of the project.

[Anders]

That 64 bit port has been moved into a branch in our SVN ( http://nsis.svn.sourceforge.net/view...ranches/WIN64/ ) I believe we will try to release a 64 bit alpha soon...

[Abu Abdullah]

thanks for the update. And what about Unicode version