How to build on Mac (mainly: where to find zlib?)

JoeStroutSeptember 11, 2015 at 12:57 PM#

How to build on Mac (mainly: where to find zlib?)

I'm trying to use NSIS to build Windows installers on my Mac. It appears to be one of the few tools out there that can do this (though I'm open to other suggestions if you have 'em).

I'm stuck on finding zlib for Win32, which it appears to require. I tried downloading the Binaries package from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/zlib.htm, and setting my ZLIB_W32 environment variable to point to the directory where I unzipped that, but scons still aborts with "zlib (win32) is missing!". I also tried pointing ZLIB_W32 to the zlib/bin directory, but get the same result.

I rechecked the build documentation, which doesn't have anything about this in the POSIX section, but does mention that "for Windows" I should get the zlib-1.2.7 prebuilt package linked here. So I downloaded that, unzipped it into my devtools directory, and updated my ZLIB_W32 environment variable to point to it. Then tried scons again... same result:

(07:50:23)JoeMBPro:nsis-3.0b2-src> scons SKIPUTILS="NSIS Menu"

scons: Reading SConscript files ...

Delete("nsis-11-Sep-2015.cvs")

Delete(".instdist")

Delete(".test")

Using GNU tools configuration

Checking for linker flag $MAP_FLAG... no

Checking for linker flag -s... yes

Checking for linker flag $MAP_FLAG... no

Checking for linker flag -s... yes

Checking for memcpy requirement... yes

Checking for memset requirement... yes

Checking for linker flag -pthread... yes

Checking for __BIG_ENDIAN__... no

gcc --version

Configured with: --prefix=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=

  /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.9.sdk/usr/include/c++/4.2.1

Apple LLVM version 5.1 (clang-503.0.40) (based on LLVM 3.4svn)

Target: x86_64-apple-darwin14.5.0

Thread model: posix

g++ --version

Configured with: --prefix=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.9.sdk/usr/include/c++/4.2.1

Apple LLVM version 5.1 (clang-503.0.40) (based on LLVM 3.4svn)

Target: x86_64-apple-darwin14.5.0

Thread model: posix

Checking for C library gdi32... no

Checking for C library user32... no

Checking for C library pthread... yes

Checking for C library iconv... yes

Checking for C library shlwapi... no

Checking for C library z... yes

Checking for C library iconv... yes

Checking for C library z... yes

Checking for C library zdll... no

Checking for C library z... no

zlib (win32) is missing!

(07:50:41)JoeMBPro:nsis-3.0b2-src> ls -l $ZLIB_W32

total 712

drwxr-xr-x@ 12 jstrout  staff     408 Sep 11 07:47 .

drwxr-xr-x   9 jstrout  staff     306 Sep 11 07:49 ..

-rw-r--r--@  1 jstrout  staff     164 Nov 10  2012 BUILD.txt

-rw-r--r--@  1 jstrout  staff   73286 May  2  2012 ChangeLog

-rw-r--r--@  1 jstrout  staff   17921 Mar  2  2006 DLL_FAQ.txt

-rw-r--r--@  1 jstrout  staff    4868 Feb 19  2012 README-WIN32.txt

drwxr-xr-x@  4 jstrout  staff     136 Nov 10  2012 include

drwxr-xr-x@  6 jstrout  staff     204 Nov 10  2012 lib

drwxr-xr-x@ 10 jstrout  staff     340 Nov 10  2012 test

-rw-r--r--@  1 jstrout  staff    8760 May  2  2012 zlib.3.pdf

-rw-r--r--@  1 jstrout  staff   81964 Nov 10  2012 zlib1.dll

-rw-r--r--@  1 jstrout  staff  156672 Nov 10  2012 zlib1.pdb

What am I doing wrong here?

Note that I have searched this forum for "Mac" (no matches), and googled around for more detailed instructions on how to build this thing on OS X, but turned up nothing. Any tips would be very appreciated.

AndersSeptember 11, 2015 at 8:01 PM#

You could try checking config.log in the root of the nsis source tree.

It sometimes also helps to delete .sconsign.dblite, .sconf_temp and build.

There are some threads about Mac on our bug tracker, you could check those.

Hopefully someone with more POSIX experience will chime in...

YathoshoSeptember 14, 2015 at 9:32 AM#

The problem is known, but you don't have to build your own NSIS binaries if you're fine with v2.46. That's available on both, Homebrew and Mac Ports.

If for some reason, you have to build NSIS binaries, does this only happen when building 3.0? Would be great if this could be solved (by someone better with POSIX experience) to get the beta running on both package managers.

Edit: I also remembered posting this on Stack Overflow, but no solution has been found

YathoshoSeptember 14, 2015 at 11:19 AM#

For the record: I don't have any zlib-related problem when building 2.46

YathoshoSeptember 14, 2015 at 4:51 PM#

I'm getting the same error when compiling on an Ubuntu-based Linux distro

AndersSeptember 14, 2015 at 6:29 PM#

Originally Posted by Yathosho View Post

I'm getting the same error when compiling on an Ubuntu-based Linux distro

I believe the nightly is built on Ubuntu (drone.Io), you can see the nightly script @ http://sourceforge.net/p/nsis/code/H...unk/nightly.sh

JasonFriday13September 15, 2015 at 1:14 AM#

Try specifing the ZLIB_W32 variable on the scons command line, if that fails use 'export ZLIB_W32="path/to/folder"' before calling scons. I have a VM setup identical to the nightly build (ubuntu 12.04 with the old cross-compiler triplet).

I'm hoping to remove the requirement for windows zlib files on linux completely by adding a wxwidgets version of zip2exe, which is the only program to use it.

YathoshoSeptember 15, 2015 at 8:46 AM#

Originally Posted by JasonFriday13 View Post

if that fails use 'export ZLIB_W32="path/to/folder"' before calling scons.

I already tried that before and all I got was a different error

Before:
Please specify folder of zlib for Win32 via ZLIB_W32

After:
zlib (win32) is missing! (Mac)
zlib (posix) is missing! (Linux)

Just to be clear, which version of zlib do you use: Windows or native; source or binary? On OS X I tried both, including a mixed setup — without success. I haven't tried that on Linux, but I guess once I understand the details how to get it running on Linux, I can manage on OS X.

PS: I will give the nightly a try when I get home!

YathoshoSeptember 15, 2015 at 12:38 PM#

Ubuntu: I can't build it using the SCons command from the script, but this worked fine (after installing the dependencies, of course):

scons ZLIB_W32=/tmp/zlib SKIPUTILS="NSIS Menu"

OS X: Still getting zlib (win32) is missing! after wgetting the same file as in nightly.sh

JasonFriday13September 15, 2015 at 9:19 PM#

I haven't touched a single Apple product, so you are on your own, sorry.

YathoshoSeptember 16, 2015 at 1:19 PM#

Originally Posted by JasonFriday13 View Post

I haven't touched a single Apple product, so you are on your own, sorry.

And nobody asked you to – my questions were not Apple specific but regarding POSIX platforms in general.

Anyway, the script provided by Anders solved all my previous problems. While I'm still figuring out how to get building to work on OS X, I'm installing FreeBSD to see whether this is a general issue with BSDs.

JasonFriday13September 17, 2015 at 2:02 AM#

Originally Posted by Yathosho View Post

Anyway, the script provided by Anders solved all my previous problems. While I'm still figuring out how to get building to work on OS X, I'm installing FreeBSD to see whether this is a general issue with BSDs.

Cool. Good idea trying FreeBSD, I didn't think of that.

YathoshoSeptember 30, 2015 at 3:50 PM#

I'm not much of a help here, I have problems running FreeBSD (actually GhostBSD) in VMware. Apparently, I'm not alone with this problem, but none of the advised solutions were of help.

Apart from this, I tried building NSIS on Fedora, but ended up with the same old zlib (posix) is missing! error. If anyone with more experience would like to look into this, this is what my adapted script looks like:

# get zlib library

sudo dnf install scons mingw32-nsiswrapper zlib.x86_64 cppunit-devel.x86_64

wget -O /tmp/zlib.zip "https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/libpng/zlib/1.2.8/zlib128-dll.zip"

mkdir /tmp/zlib

unzip /tmp/zlib.zip -d /tmp/zlib



# build

scons ZLIB_W32=/tmp/zlib SKIPUTILS="NSIS Menu" test dist-zip 2>&1 | tee build.log



# alternatively try zlib.x86_64 installed with dnf

scons ZLIB_W32=/usr/share/man/mann/zlib.n.gz SKIPUTILS="NSIS Menu" test dist-zip 2>&1 | tee build-alt.log

See attachments for build logs.

AndersSeptember 30, 2015 at 5:24 PM#

Originally Posted by Yathosho View Post

Just to be clear, which version of zlib do you use

You need both the Windows version and the native POSIX version.

Kichik says that ZLIB_W32 should be used as a scons parameter and needs to point to the Windows version that you can download from our wiki. SCons also needs to be able to find the zlib-dev package for your platform (zlib.h and z library, see AddZLib in %NSISSource%\SCons\utils.py)

JasonFriday13October 1, 2015 at 3:51 AM#

^^ What he said. The zlib(posix) error is fixed by installing the zlib package and it's -dev counterpart with the source headers. I installed this first before I started compiling nsis, that's probably why I never see this error.

YathoshoOctober 1, 2015 at 8:04 AM#

Originally Posted by Anders View Post

You need both the Windows version and the native POSIX version.

Kichik says that ZLIB_W32 should be used as a scons parameter and needs to point to the Windows version that you can download from our wiki. SCons also needs to be able to find the zlib-dev package for your platform (zlib.h and z library, see AddZLib in %NSISSource%\SCons\utils.py)

Well, the problem then is identifying the equivalent zlib-dev package for Fedora and FreeBSD. They both have names different from the Debian packages. Fedora's DNF lists hundred of packages containing the word "zlib" and FreeBSD is a whole different story.

Anyway, I tried to localize the problems to help the OP, but I don't have too much time for this. Hopefully someone else can pick up from here.

Looking at the history for the makensis formula, I'm positive that NSIS 3.0 will be supported as soon as it goes final.

AndersOctober 1, 2015 at 4:51 PM#

Originally Posted by Yathosho View Post

Well, the problem then is identifying the equivalent zlib-dev package for Fedora and FreeBSD. They both have names different from the Debian packages.

zlib + zlib-devel on Fedora?

YathoshoFebruary 11, 2016 at 11:49 AM#

@JoeStrout I just thought you could take a look at how Brew compiles the source, don't know why I didn't think of it earlier

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/060d4cc53adb017fc32dc1a553d7535d9c4237ff/Library/Formula/makensis.rb

YathoshoFebruary 26, 2016 at 5:06 PM#

I finally managed to build NSIS 3.0b3 on OS X!

Kickik pointed out, that zlib is required by zip2exe, for which -imho- there's no need to be compiled on non-Windows. So you can compile using the flag

SKIPUTILS="zip2exe"

or even

SKIPUTILS=all

.

Here's an updated formula for Homebrew, pull request is pending

JasonFriday13February 28, 2016 at 8:50 PM#

Originally Posted by Yathosho View Post

I finally managed to build NSIS 3.0b3 on OS X!

Kickik pointed out, that zlib is required by zip2exe, for which -imho- there's no need to be compiled on non-Windows.

I've been working on a port of zip2exe to get rid of this problem, but it still isn't finished yet. I should really finish it off before NSIS 3 exits beta.

YathoshoFebruary 29, 2016 at 7:10 AM#

It sure would be nice, for the sake of offering the full feature set, but I don't see it as a requirement. It's one thing to be able to compile installers on non-Windows, but I doubt there are (m)any people who need zip2exe on non-Windows.

JasonFriday13March 1, 2016 at 5:47 PM#

Yeah, that's the main reason why it hasn't changed. But the reason I'm doing the port is to get rid of the requirement to have windows zlib files on non-windows platforms in the first place.