cmxcmz2002
3rd March 2006 01:09 UTC

can a compiled installer be changed from outside?
Hi All,

I am new to NSIS. Any suggestion will be appreciated.

I've already created an installer for my app.

My client will ask some affiliate web sites to host the installer for downloading and these web sites will get some benefit. So my client will need to know which site a user download his installer. We call it "affiliateID".

My question is if it's possible to dynamically change the installer.exe itself to append the 'affiliateID' info to it when the user clicks the download link to download the installer.


thanks

Comperio
3rd March 2006 01:59 UTC

Compiled NSIS exes are fairly 'hack-proof'.

You might be able to add some information to the version tab of the EXE's properties window using the suggestions in this thread. (Assuming that the site hosting the file can run server-side scripts.)

Other than that, I'm outta ideas... :(

dienjd
3rd March 2006 03:35 UTC

You could wrap the installer and have different download links that point to different wrapped builds, which would pass command line parameters to the install that would trigger certain actions/branding changes.

Of course both of this suggestion depends on the installer being set up to key off of command line parameters, so you'd have to implement that and rebuild.

kichik
3rd March 2006 09:38 UTC

You can append data to the installer file without it affecting the CRC check. The CRC check stops at the end of the installer data, so anything tacked after it will be igonred by the installer. However, your script could read that data and do with it as it pleases.