NSIS Distribution - NVDA Dependency

This repository contains an installed distribution of NSIS.

Building NSIS from source is slow, so a prebuilt distribution is used as a dependency for NVDA.

Current Version

v3.10

NSIS

NVDA doesn't require most of NSIS, so to make the dependency smaller, a custom installation is created. While a custom NSIS installation could be created using the installer, to save time a full installation distributed zip is download and extracted. Then the contents are filtered by .gitignore. .gitignore was written to filter the same contents as the NSIS 2.51 custom installation used in older versions of NVDA. Additionally, unused exes are also filtered to minimize disk space usage.

Updating NSIS

These steps use the root directory of this git submodule as the working directory. When developing from the NVDA repository, the working directory for updating NSIS is include/nsis.

1. Remove the folder ./NSIS.
2. Download the latest .zip distribution from the NSIS sourceforge.
   • Example: nsis-3.08.zip
3. Extract the installation to ./NSIS
4. From git bash:
   • Perform git add NSIS to track new files.
   • Update .gitignore if necessary.
     • Perform git diff --stat NSIS, ensure no unexpected files are being added.
       • Expected new files may include:
         • graphics
         • languages
     • Check git clean -xdn NSIS, ensure no unexpected files are being ignored by .gitignore.
       • This is unlikely unless NVDA requires new features bundled with NSIS.
       • If building the launcher fails, consider updating .gitignore.
   • Perform git clean -xdf NSIS, as fresh clones need to be able to work without ignored files.
5. From a command prompt at the NVDA repository root, build the launcher:
   • scons launcher
6. Check for build errors or warnings

Testing

Test the installer and uninstaller, the two executables created by .nsi scripts.

Test across supported versions of Windows. Consider:

• ARM / 32bit / 64bit
• Older and newer builds
• Windows .isos using locales other than English

Testing the installer

Example: (nvda_snapshot_source-example-5683e66.exe)

Test all the code pathways for the installer

• --minimal causes no sound to be played results in an installation
• no --minimal causes the installer sound to be played

Smoke test the installer

• via CMD with the flag
  • --install results in an installation and NVDA starting afterwards
  • --install-silent results in an installation without NVDA starting afterwards
• executing the launcher via UI reaches the NVDA dialog

Testing the uninstaller

First install NVDA using the installer.

Finding the uninstaller:

• Find uninstall.exe in the NVDA installation folder.
• Ensure that "Uninstall NVDA" can be found via the Windows search menu.
• Ensure that NVDA can be found in the Windows uninstaller tool: "Add or Remove programs"

Smoke test the uninstaller

• Executing the uninstaller and completing the un-installation:
  • keeps user config
  • removes NVDA from Start Menu
  • removes NVDA from the installed folder