crisp
7th April 2002 18:46 UTC

Silent Mode Comand Line
Hello

I'm sorry to interrupt this technical discussion about NSIS compiler.

I have a question as a USER of a program distributed using NSIS. (I'm sorry if I am in the writing in the wrong place) .

I want to make a custom CD which will install some applications after the Windows Setup is complete.

So I want to run a kit in silent mode. This works for the Install Shield programs (-r and the -s switch).
But I cannot get it to work for a NSIS kit. (Ex. Divx412codec)

I've tryied /S and /SILENT, after browsing the compiler documentation but it doesn't run in silent mode.

Thansks for your time,

Crisp

kichik
7th April 2002 19:47 UTC

Hi Crisp!

After looking into the source and testing on some of my installers I have found out that /S does work.

There are two exceptions:
1) The command line interpretation is case sensitive (/s won't work, only /S)
2) If the compiler which built the installer was a recompiled version of NSIS, it could have NSIS_CONFIG_SILENT_SUPPORT disabled which means you can not run the installer built by it in silent mode.

If you did use /S and not /s I see no other reason of DivX not running in silent mode but a recompiled compiler.

KiCHiK

crisp
7th April 2002 23:02 UTC

Hi kichik!

I do run the installer with /S not /s.
So I guess SILENT Suport is disabled, or is an OLD version of NSIS (1.44 i think).
I've also tried the Winamp installation kit and Zoom DVD Player . Still nothing.
I'm definetly doing something wrong here, I don't think everybody disabled SILENT mode ...

Crisp

crisp
7th April 2002 23:20 UTC

Hi kichik again !

I've just tested with PowerDivx312 (NSIS 1.60) and it's working ...
Thanks for your time !
So not all the installers that float around support this feature. Too bad.

Anyway, can someone point me to a reference of command-line switches or this is something that depends on how the kit was build ?

Crisp

Smile2Me
8th April 2002 07:29 UTC

Crisp,

the reference is:
http://www.nullsoft.com/free/nsis/makensis.htm

Since NSIS is OpenSource everyone can rebuild the project to do specific tasks and hence it's possible that in a custom made setup the /S is not supported.

Good luck,
greetz, Hendri.

kichik
8th April 2002 13:18 UTC

Hi Crisp!

According to the version history (quoted below) commmand line options were added in version 1.42...

nsis142.exe (5/6/01)
Made it so that installers can take command line switches: /S (silent), /NCRC (no CRC checking) and /D= (sets output directory). Note that /D= must be the last parameter on the line.
[...]

wilbur
17th May 2002 22:54 UTC

/D command line option doesn't work
>Made it so that installers can take command line switches: /S (silent), / NCRC (no CRC checking) and /D= (sets output directory). Note that /D= must be the last parameter on the line.

I cannot get /D to work.
I executed: ./setup_debug.exe /S /D=./x from a cygwin shell. The program silently installed into the install directory defined in the .nsi file. I tried several values (x, ./x, and \x) for the value of /D, but they were all ignored. And, directory x did exist.

kichik
18th May 2002 13:30 UTC

This indeed seems like a bug to me. The /D switch is read and processed before the default installation dir set with InstallDir is read and processed. The later ignores the fact that the first has already set the installation dir.

kichik
19th May 2002 13:59 UTC

Oops :(

Sorry about that one, my bad... It does ignore it if an installation directory was given in the command line.

I have looked closer into the code and it seems that the directory validating code expects full path, that is C:\cygwin\x and not ./x or other variations.

Again, I am sorry about this confusion.

wilbur
20th May 2002 23:31 UTC

I got /D to work using absolute directories. The following commands silently install into c:\x. setup.exe will create x if it doesn't exist.

(From Dos command prompt): setup.exe /S /D=c:\x
(From cygwin shell): ./setup.exe /S /D=c:\\x

timbyrd
20th September 2003 04:58 UTC

/D and quotes
(Using a dev snapshot from 2003-Sep-17)

I was beating my head about using the /D switch in my installer. I thought that the InstallDir and InstallDirRegKey commands were overriding it. It turns out, though, that the /D switch doesn't work if the specified folder has quotes in it, e.g.:

myinstall.exe /S /D="C:\Program Files\testdir"

does not work, but

myinstall.exe /S /D=C:\Program Files\testdir

does work.

Looking at the code in Source\exehead\Main.c, I understand that the /D switch has to be the last one on the command line. But I would like to understand why it can't deal with quoted paths.

-- Tim

kichik
20th September 2003 11:14 UTC

If it has to be last then there is no use of quotes. Nothing can come after it, hence spaces won't matter.

timbyrd
22nd September 2003 21:21 UTC

loop:

Originally posted by kichik
If it has to be last then there is no use of quotes. Nothing can come after it, hence spaces won't matter.

kichik
22nd September 2003 21:29 UTC

I'm afraid that part is not very well documented. But this thread pretty much coveres it all.