can nsis be used for this?

I am currently using another installer but it is discontinued, full of glitches, bit rot and uglyness so I am looking for alternatives.

What I am doing and need to replicate: I do not want to install software on the Windows machine where the installer is executed; I need the installer to copy files to another machine via network (using external commands) and the copied files will be installed there by executing external commands. No other file must be included in the installer (except maybe the external commands and their libraries) because the installer must be built once, have a certain version number and then deal with whatever data it gets. This is a requirement because every installation is unique but the installer is not.

So I will never know how many folders and files there will be and how they are named but the installer needs to find files by pattern like *.ini during execution, parse them afterwards and then create the dialogues I need to know which files need to be processed (e.g. a combobox must show directory1 and directory2 then the ini file from the chosen directory will be read and then files from certain sections from within that file will be processed).

Assume I have the following structure containing my installation data:

somedir
|- directory1
| |- foo.ini
| `- files
|- directory2
| |-bar.ini
| `-more_files
`- mynsisinstaller.exe

Is it possible to use nsis to
1. create dialogue windows with checkbox lists depending on ini file content and execute external commands to do things with files from the sub directories without packing any of these files into the installer itself,
2. create some static, custom dialogues using input fields, buttons, file chooser dialogues etc...?
It looks like most of this will be doable but I am not sure if my requirement of not including the other files can be met.

What is a checkbox list? Are you talking about a listview with checkboxes?

Not including your own files is not a problem but custom pages are created by NSIS plugins...

I mean checkboxes generated by a list of entries I get from the ini files, e.g. there is a section for optional settings and I want a checkbox for each of those:

blah.ini:
[optional]
foo
bar
baz

->
nsis:
"Please select optional modules"
[] foo
[] bar
[] baz

The InstallOptions custom page plugin takes the page design from a .ini file.

Originally Posted by Anders View Post

The InstallOptions custom page plugin takes the page design from a .ini file.

InstallOptions plug-in is deprecated, isnt it? Maybe using nsDialogs?

Originally Posted by T.Slappy View Post

InstallOptions plug-in is deprecated, isnt it? Maybe using nsDialogs?

Using IO is fine and a lot easier if you are building the UI from some external source.