Special Builds

You can recompile NSIS with a custom configuration to remove features you are not using (to decrease the overhead size), to enable features that are not enabled by default (like advanced logging) or to change advanced settings of compression methods and variables. For available configurations, use scons --help before building.

For the users without a building environment, some special builds of makensis.exe are provided here. These builds are only compatible with NSIS 3.10 (older versions). Always make sure you extract the stubs files as well as they are part of makensis.

Advanced logging

This build includes advanced logging features that allow you create an exact log of all installer actions (see the users manual for details). You can use it if you want testers or users to send installation reports.

Download advanced logging build

To install extract the zip file to the folder where you installed NSIS. Usually that would be C:\Program Files\NSIS or C:\Program Files (x86)\NSIS.

Build Command

If you want to build your own from source, use:

 scons NSIS_CONFIG_LOG=yes PREFIX=C:\somewhere install-compiler install-stubs

Large strings

If you are working with large strings use this build which has a maximum string length of 8192 bytes instead of the default of 1024 bytes.

Download large strings build

To install extract the zip file to the folder where you installed NSIS. Usually that would be C:\Program Files\NSIS or C:\Program Files (x86)\NSIS.

Build Command

If you want to build your own from source, use:

 scons NSIS_MAX_STRLEN=8192 PREFIX=C:\somewhere install-compiler install-stubs