martinm1000
8th May 2007 21:53 UTC

SetOverwrite scope
Hi,

I just started doing NSIS installer, and there is one thing that I cannot understand...

I have a custom window where I can select if I should do a new installation (SetOverwrite on) or an update (SetOverwrite off) for some files. This is working great.

But SetOverwrite on/off doesn't seems to be working always.

This doesnt work even if MessageBoxes confirm that the correct SetOverwrite was done:

Section "!Section 1"
  SetOutPath $INSTDIR
  SetOverwrite on
  ; Recreate everything BUT web.config
  File /a /r /x "web.config" "${SRCDIR}\*.*"
SectionEnd

Section "Section 2"
  SetOutPath $INSTDIR

  ${If} $SETUP_MODE == "1"
    SetOverwrite off ; Don't overwrite present files
  ${ElseIf} $SETUP_MODE == "0"
    SetOverwrite on
  ${EndIf}

  ; This overwrite my file, even if I just wrote into it (INSTDIR)!
  File "${SRCDIR}\web.config"
SectionEnd

It works if I do one of the folowing:

  ${If} $SETUP_MODE == "1"
    SetOverwrite off ; Don't overwrite present files
    File "${SRCDIR}\web.config"
  ${ElseIf} $SETUP_MODE == "0"
    SetOverwrite on
    File "${SRCDIR}\web.config"
  ${EndIf}

Or it works (as it should) if I do this:

SetOverwrite off
File "${SRCDIR}\web.config"

--

So, What is the scope of SetOverwrite ???

martinm1000
8th May 2007 22:56 UTC

I'm still reading and trying many ways, but nothing I do work correctly... But as I was reading the manual, could all those problems be explained by the fact that SetOverwrite is a compiler flag and not an instruction ?

If so.... it kind of s*cks no ?

Comm@nder21
9th May 2007 15:32 UTC

yea, setoverwrite is interpreted by the compiler and thus the setting is hardwritten into the installer on compile time.

setoverwrite is not used on runtime so you can't use it to change the overwrite mode during installation.

martinm1000
9th May 2007 16:06 UTC

Thanks for the information. So there is no other way to set this overwrite at runtime ?

Hoping my other code constructs will still work ok !