DVD
15th October 2001 10:07 UTC

File size
No doubt, NSIS looks interesting.
I was wondering if anyone other than me needs to split the installer file in small parts so that they can be copied to some floppy disks.
I know, I know.... still using floppy disks? Well, yes, for some application I'm still using the old floppy and could be really nice to use the NSIS also with the floppy disk.
Any idea to implement soch an option?

Thanks,

DVD

spanky
15th October 2001 10:16 UTC

Most compression utilities support disk spanning. For easier distribution create a self-extracting archive.

From there you can have the archive run your installer, etc.

DVD
15th October 2001 10:58 UTC

You are right, but, in that way, you need first to extract the NSIS
executable and then run it. Therefore the installation process will be much slower. It could be much better if the NSIS engine could work directly from the splitted files.

DVD

Koen van de Sande
15th October 2001 17:43 UTC

I think the 'slower' thing with selfextracting archives is hardly noticable on floppy drives - because they are a bit slow.

Koen :eek:

pjw62
15th October 2001 18:36 UTC

This sort of thing would be quite easy to add as long as you didn't need the individual files to span disks..

you could use an additional offset for EW_EXTRACTFILE specifying a file number that could be base_01, base_02 etc..

Then you would need to modify GetCompressedDataFromDataBlock so that it can optionally take a third parameter (use ", ... )" ) that specifies an alternative input file which would be on the other floppy disk. If the file base_%u did not exist on the floppy, the installer would need to ask for another disk. To save problems of the installer needing to read from the initial .exe, have it copy itself to a temporary directory first.

With regard to makensis, you would need to make it generate the install file's section in different files after the installer size exceeds 1.38 mb and I haven;t thought about how to do that, yet.

spanky
16th October 2001 00:52 UTC

Originally posted by Koen van de Sande
I think the 'slower' thing with selfextracting archives is hardly noticable on floppy drives - because they are a bit slow.

Koen :eek: