~nsu.tmp directory in $TEMP

sebarnolds
15th February 2007 09:06 UTC

~nsu.tmp directory in $TEMP
Hi.

I noticed something strange about the uninstaller. When I run it, it copies itself to "$TEMP\~nsu.tmp\Au_.exe", run it and exit itself. By doing so it allows the removal of the "official" uninstaller executable.

I noticed that the "$TEMP\~nsu.tmp\Au_.exe" file is only removed after reboot. However the "$TEMP\~nsu.tmp" directory is not removed. Is it normal ? I guess it shouldn't be too annoying to stay with an empty temp directory but it would be much cleaner to delete it.

Any idea / remarks about this ?

Thanks,
Sebastien

Red Wine
15th February 2007 09:16 UTC

This is the way that uninstaller is programed to operate, not a big deal I guess leaving an empty dir into $TEMP.

sebarnolds
15th February 2007 09:18 UTC

Yeah, but it would be cleaner if the uninstaller copied itself to something like "$TEMP\$name.exe" instead of in a directory of his own... where $name is the result of a call to GetTempFileName. No ?

Sebastien

Red Wine
15th February 2007 09:37 UTC

I couldn't say, being open source, NSIS offers abilities to modify it in the way it suits your needs, moreover if you have added a feature yourself, you can post the source code in the patch tracker,
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid...49&func=browse

sebarnolds
15th February 2007 09:59 UTC

Maybe we could have some input from NSIS developers as the case may have been thought and they could have thought of potential problems with that approach ?

Sebastien

{_trueparuex^}
15th February 2007 11:53 UTC

Originally posted by sebarnolds
Yeah, but it would be cleaner if the uninstaller copied itself to something like "$TEMP\$name.exe" instead of in a directory of his own... where $name is the result of a call to GetTempFileName. No ?

Sebastien

In older NSIS versions it worked just like that. I don't know why it was changed, but I bet there is a reason for it.

onad
15th February 2007 11:56 UTC

Yes there is a reason for it. From top of my head I do not recall why, only I remember was involved back then in some scenario's that benefited having a separate directory.

pengyou
15th February 2007 12:38 UTC

From the Changelog for NSIS 2.08 (released on July 23rd, 2005):

Made uninstallers copy themselves into a subdirectory of the temporary directory to avoid DLLs left in the temporary directory from being loaded by the uninstaller (patch #1214319)

sebarnolds
15th February 2007 13:52 UTC

Hey.

Yeah, thanks for your remarks.

I wrote a patch to remove the directory too. The description can be found here :
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=373087&aid=1660626&group_id=22049

Hope it will be useful,
Sebastien