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Creating a Windows installer for FreeCAD

package/WindowsInstaller/README.md

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Creating a Windows installer for FreeCAD

These are instructions for building an NSIS-based installer for FreeCAD. They were designed for FreeCAD 0.21 and later, and presume that you have cloned a copy of FreeCAD's source code, and therefore have the directory package/WindowsInstaller.

Install NSIS

To set up your system for building an NSIS installer:

  1. Install the latest version 3.x of NSIS (https://nsis.sourceforge.io/Download)
  2. Download these special release files of NSIS that support large strings:</br> https://nsis.sourceforge.io/Special_Builds#Large_strings</br> and copy the contained files into the corresponding NSIS installations folders
  3. Download these special release files of NSIS that support logging:</br> https://nsis.sourceforge.io/Special_Builds#Advanced_logging</br> and copy the contained files into the corresponding NSIS installations folders
  4. Download and install the nsProcess plugin from https://nsis.sourceforge.io/NsProcess_plugin -- you will need the version that supports Unicode, so make sure to follow the appropriate instructions on their site to install that one (as of this writing it involves manually copying and renaming the plugin DLL file).

Build the installer

Next, update the installer settings for the current version of FreeCAD. Starting from the package/WindowsInstaller folder in the FreeCAD source tree:

  1. Set the appropriate version strings for the release you are creating. These are used to construct the filename of the installer, among other things. If you have to upload a new version of the installer for the exact same release of FreeCAD, increment APP_VERSION BUILD as needed. The main version numbers are dynamically obtained by calling freecadcmd.exe.
nsis
!define APP_VERSION_EMERGENCY "RC1"
!define APP_VERSION_BUILD 1
  1. If the installer will be made from a LibPack build create a new folder called MSVCRedist within the folder package/WindowsInstaller and copy the following files from your MSVC installation into it:
vcruntime140.dll
concrt140.dll
msvcp140.dll
vcamp140.dll
vccorlib140.dll
vcomp140.dll
  1. If required open the file Settings.nsh with a text editor (both jEdit and Visual Studio Code are good editors for NSIS files). Edit the following paths to correspond to your system: FILES_FREECAD corresponds to your installation directory (e.g. CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX if you self-compiled), FILES_THUMBS is the directory where the thumbnailer dll is located and FILES_DEPS is the folder you created with the MSVC redistributable files in it. FILES_DEPS is not needed if the installer is created from a conda bundle so it is not set by default. These can be set via /D argument for makensis.exe or by editing Settings.nsh.
nsis
!ifndef FILES_FREECAD
    !define FILES_FREECAD "${__FILEDIR__}\FreeCAD"
!endif
!ifndef FILES_THUMBS
    !define FILES_THUMBS "${__FILEDIR__}\thumbnail"
!endif

#!define FILES_DEPS "${__FILEDIR__}\MSVC_Redist"
  1. Ensure the FreeCAD files are in place. Here you have two options:
    • If you are working from an already-compiled version of FreeCAD provided to you by an outside source: in this case, simply ensure that FILES_FREECAD is set to the directory containing those files.
    • If you compiled FreeCAD on your own as described here (and using the Install option outlined there). Then:
      • Copy into the installation folder the file Delete.bat that is part of the installer
      • open a command line in Windows and change to the folder
      • run the command</br> Delete.bat
      • (These steps assure that the installer only contains files users need. Moreover it assures that the overall files size is below 2 GB and we can use the most compact compression for the installer.)
  2. Right-click on the file FreeCAD-installer.nsi and choose Compile NSIS script to compile the installer. You can also run from command line to specify some settings
cmd
%your_nsis_path%\makensis.exe /D'FILES_FREECAD="D:\some\path\FreeCAD"' /D'FILES_DEPS="${__FILEDIR__}\MSVC_Redist" /D'ExeFile="my-FreeCAD-installer.exe"' FreeCAD-installer.nsi

NOTE: For test builds of the installer you can turn off compression. This speeds up the build time for the installer a lot but increases its file size. The compression is turned off by commenting the line</br> SetCompressor /SOLID lzma</br> in the file Settings.nsh or by defining FC_TEST_BUILD in command line

cmd
%your_nsis_path%\makensis.exe [OPTIONS] /DFC_TEST_BUILD FreeCAD-installer.nsi