Can I decompile an existing installer?: Difference between revisions
(dark is nice, but unrelated) |
No edit summary |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
Currently NSIS installers cannot be fully decompiled. The installer itself doesn't provide any method to extract files or the script without installation. It is the developer's choice whether the source code and/or the files for the installer are available to the public or not. | Currently NSIS installers cannot be fully decompiled. The installer itself doesn't provide any method to extract files or the script without installation. It is the developer's choice whether the source code and/or the files for the installer are available to the public or not. | ||
There are, however, external tools that allow this. [http://www.7-zip.org 7-zip] (version 4.40beta at the time of this writing) supports decompressing NSIS installers compressed with lzma or bzip, but the source code is still partially compiled and requires extensive modification before the script can be recompiled. | There are, however, external tools that allow this. [http://www.7-zip.org 7-zip] (version 4.40beta at the time of this writing) supports decompressing NSIS installers compressed with lzma or bzip, but the source code is still partially compiled and requires extensive modification before the script can be recompiled. The decompression plug-in InstallExplorer [http://www.totalcmd.net/plugring/installexplorer.html InstExpl.wcx] is also available for ''TotalCommander''. For use without the TotalCommander the [http://legroom.net/software/uniextract Universal Extractor] i a good option. | ||
And there is the [[NullsoftDecompiler]] or 'NSIDecomp'. It's a open source Python script that'll help you to nearly fully recover you NSIS-installation script. | |||
State is currently alpha - its not very user friendly and it'll expects the script.bin' that'll come from InstExpl.wcx. | |||
As a general note to software developers, you should use a plugin like [[DcryptDll : Adding Encryption to NSIS|DCryptDll]] if you need to protect certain files in your installer. | As a general note to software developers, you should use a plugin like [[DcryptDll : Adding Encryption to NSIS|DCryptDll]] if you need to protect certain files in your installer. | ||
[[Category:General FAQ]] | [[Category:General FAQ]] | ||
Revision as of 14:50, 16 February 2014
Currently NSIS installers cannot be fully decompiled. The installer itself doesn't provide any method to extract files or the script without installation. It is the developer's choice whether the source code and/or the files for the installer are available to the public or not.
There are, however, external tools that allow this. 7-zip (version 4.40beta at the time of this writing) supports decompressing NSIS installers compressed with lzma or bzip, but the source code is still partially compiled and requires extensive modification before the script can be recompiled. The decompression plug-in InstallExplorer InstExpl.wcx is also available for TotalCommander. For use without the TotalCommander the Universal Extractor i a good option.
And there is the NullsoftDecompiler or 'NSIDecomp'. It's a open source Python script that'll help you to nearly fully recover you NSIS-installation script. State is currently alpha - its not very user friendly and it'll expects the script.bin' that'll come from InstExpl.wcx.
As a general note to software developers, you should use a plugin like DCryptDll if you need to protect certain files in your installer.
