TomBodet
11th July 2011 14:34 UTC

Leaving files outside outfile
I've been informed I need to create essentially a CD image where we'll have a copy of some files outside of the installer .exe so the user can access them without installing the application. One of which being a readme for prereqs and setup instructions.

Everything I've found so far deals with how files are treated inside the installer .exe (ie SetCompress) or how the file is treated at the target location (ie file /oname).

What I need is to be able to direct makeinstall to an output directory and as part of the installer creation, it copies files into that directory so it can then be taken by someone and dropped on a CD. The idea is so whomever is creating a CD, doesn't have to cobble the CD together by hand, pulling files from their svn locations. We'd like NSIS to do that for us. If this were InstallShield, I'd put these files in the "support files" section where it leaves them outside the final cab file so they are accessible directly on the install CD, prior to install.

I'm either missing the obvious or this isn't possible with NSIS. Can someone help me?

Thanks.

MSG
11th July 2011 15:35 UTC

You can use the compile-time commands such as !system to do this. My guess would be:

!system 'copy "c:\path\file.ext" "c:\project\installer"'

TomBodet
11th July 2011 16:02 UTC

There we go.

Thanks MSG. That's exactly what I needed and you were spot on with the syntax.