Sega 500

1. Sega 500 More Advanced NSIS Jeff “Ezeikeil” Giles jgiles@artschool.com http://gamestudies.cdis.org/~jgiles

2. More on NSIS • As I eluded to last day, the NSIS is an insanely powerful. • To demonstrate that, we’re going to run with it some more and create some new NSI scripts that edit the registry, create uninstallers and edit ini files.

3. Adding Registry Entries • Thus, getting down to it, editing the Registry is the first step to creating an uninstaller. • In effect, we store some data in it which we can later access to find out what files we put where.

4. Adding Registry Entries • So first, a quick look at what the registry looks like. • You can access yours by typing regedit at the command prompt.

5. Adding Registry Entries Stored values Registry keys

6. Adding Registry Entries • The NSIS gives us acronyms for accessing these: HKCR or HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT HKLM or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE HKCU or HKEY_CURRENT_USER HKU or HKEY_USERS HKCC or HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG HKDD or HKEY_DYN_DATA HKPD or HKEY_PERFORMANCE_DATA

7. Adding Registry Entries • Having a quick look we see that we can store all sorts of information in here. • My UT 2003 reg entry:

8. Adding Registry Entries • Now, you can edit this by hand if you like by right clicking the REF_SZ value, but this IS playing with fire... You will likely break stuff. • The registry is how windows know what, and where things are!

9. Adding Registry Entries • So what tools does NSIS give us then? • Well, if you refer to the docs, there’s a list of like a dozen items. We don’t need all of this functionality so we’ll just look at what we are going to use here.

10. Adding Registry Entries • InstallDirRegKey is the first item we need. • This attribute tells the installer to check a string in the registry, and use it for the install dir if that string is valid.

11. Adding Registry Entries • If this attribute is present, it will override the InstallDir attribute if the registry key is valid, otherwise it will fall back to the InstallDir default.

12. Adding Registry Entries • Usage: InstallDirRegKey HKLM SOFTWARE\EZE_INSTALL "Install_Dir" Registry path Which key to install under Value name

13. Adding Registry Entries • What this gives us… A variable to store our path in A new registry directory under local machine

14. Adding Registry Entries • HKLM: is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key and we’ll be using this the most. • However, there’s no reason why you couldn’t store some of your data elsewhere.

15. Adding Registry Entries • SOFTWARE\EZE_INSTALL is literally the path in the registry (under HKLM) where to store our data • And the Install_Dir is the variable we create to hold out install path. It’s currently uninitalized.

16. Editing Registry Entries • Next we’ll need to set our value with WriteRegStr • Simply writes a string into the registry. • Notice the path and parameter is the same as above. WriteRegStr HKLM SOFTWARE\EZE_INSTALL "Install_Dir" "$INSTDIR"

17. Editing Registry Entries • In this case, we store the path to our install directory. WriteRegStr HKLM SOFTWARE\EZE_INSTALL "Install_Dir" "$INSTDIR"

18. Editing Registry Entries • So the next step towards building an uninstaller is to let the windows uninstaller know about it.

19. Editing Registry Entries • We achieve this by adding uninstall information into the windows uninstall registry. SoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionUninstall

20. Editing Registry Entries • We simply use the same WriteRegStr command and specify a different path WriteRegStr HKLM "Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Goober" "DisplayName" " EZE Installer (REMOVE ME)"

21. Editing Registry Entries • However in this case, we need to define our uninstall string also. WriteRegStr HKLM "Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Goober" "UninstallString" '"$INSTDIR\uninstall.exe"'

22. Creating the Uninstaller • The actual creation of the uninstaller surprisingly simple…a one liner. • Where uninstall.exe is the desired name of the output uninstall program. WriteUninstaller "uninstall.exe"

23. Creating the Uninstaller • Well, yeah, this will create the program for us, but it’s won’t do anything because we’ve not told it about where to get it’s uninstall information.

24. Creating the Uninstaller • Well, funnily enough, NSIS has commands for this too: • DeleteRegKey: • Deletes a registry key. If “/ifempty” is specified, the registry key will only be deleted if it has no subkeys (otherwise, the whole registry tree will be removed).

25. Creating the Uninstaller • So, in this case, we’ll need to specify DeleteRegKey command for both our dir and the windows uninstall dir.

26. Creating the Uninstaller • Notice the paths are the same as when we used the WriteRegStr. Windows uninstall dir DeleteRegKey HKLM "Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Goober" DeleteRegKey HKLM SOFTWARE\EZE_INSTALL Our Install registry entry

27. Creating the Uninstaller • And this will do just what it promises and remove the entries in the registry. • But what about the files? An uninstaller is no good if we don’t get ride of those!

28. Creating the Uninstaller • To simply delete a file is nothing more than: Delete $INSTDIR\Goober\Notepad.exe • Delete command: • Delete file (which can be a file or wildcard, but should be specified with a full path) from the target system.

29. Creating the Uninstaller • Hrmmm…”Wild card”? • Sure we can delete files one by one…But that’s lame. If we go back to the old DOS prompt days, we would use * operators to indicate “all”

30. Creating the Uninstaller • So if we go with the *.* we tell it the delete all files with any postfix • Will purge everything in this folder. • This also works for copying. Delete $INSTDIR\Goober\*.*

31. Creating the Uninstaller • So then we just need to get ride of the uninstaller program and the directory. Kill off the uninstaller Delete $INSTDIR\uninstall.exe RMDir "$INSTDIR\Goober Remove the folder

32. Creating the Uninstaller • RMDir command: • Remove the specified directory (which should be a full path). • Without /r, the directory will only be removed if it is completely empty. • If /r is specified, the directory will be removed recursively, so all directories and files in the specified directory will be removed.

33. Creating the Uninstaller • So lets whip one up, and from there we’ll look at Editing ini files with NSIS • But this time, lets use something other than notepad to get started…

34. Slate Blue • I discovered this great scripting tool called Slate Blue which is super handy for setting up your nsi scripts. • There are 2 versions both available from http://www.morphedmedia.com/ …both are free.

35. Slate Blue • Version 1.0 is a really handy GUI for creating simple nsi scripts that can save you from the mundane tasks of setup…like name and color and what not.

36. Slate Blue • Then there’s version 1.07 which is a really nice scripting program which allows you to create and edit nsi scripts. • However, the last time I looked, it was a bit unstable.

37. Slate Blue • Not to mention that it has a full list of NSIS commands in the left window. • The right side is where you do your scripting…very handy.

38. Editing INI files • So on with INI files

39. Editing INI files • Once again, the actual editing of an existing ini file is surprisingly easy and NSIS have given us a nice tool to do it. • WriteINIStr • Writes entry_name=value into [section_name] of ini_filename. The error flag is set if the string could not be written to the ini file.

40. Editing INI files • In other words, this will seek a section head in a file and add an entry. • Eg, if I wanted to add an entry to section [public] in test.ini I could use

41. Editing INI files Section name [public] File name and full path WriteINIStr $INSTDIR\Goober\test.ini public "num1" "Something 1" Variable name Value to be set

42. Editing INI files • Note: You can also use the WriteINIStr to create an ini file that is of the name in the path.

43. Editing INI files • OK, this is good and all, but there has to be some way to not have to enter ALL the ini edit commands into the installer… • ’cause all that typing would suck.

44. Editing INI files • Rest easy, there is. • We can read from existing ini files using the ReadIniStr.

45. Editing INI files Section name [public] to read from File name and full path ReadIniStr $1 "C:\...Folder\READtest.ini" Mo "num" Variable name to read Register in which to store the data

46. Editing INI files • Ok great, we can read from one file to another…one line at a time…still lots of typing involved in this. • But NSIS as you recall has piles of functionality with it. We can do string operations and even branching!

47. Editing INI files • So here’s what I have in mind. We’ll read data from an existing ini and store it in a variable. • We’ll then copy this data from the variable into the target ini file. • Loop until we reach the end of the read file.

48. Editing INI files • The data will be appended to the end of the test.ini file. • The only requirement in this case is that the variables in the read file must be named similar to num1, num2, num3…numX.

49. Editing INI files • Functionally, this is a really simple loop with a counter.

50. Editing INI files • Some functionality that we’ll need: • StrCpy • Sets the user variable $x with str. Note that str can contain other variables, or the user variable being set (concatenating strings this way is possible, etc).