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:

Install the latest version 3.x of NSIS (https://nsis.sourceforge.io/Download)
Download these special release files of NSIS that support large strings: https://nsis.sourceforge.io/Special_Builds#Large_strings and copy the contained files into the corresponding NSIS installations folders
Download these special release files of NSIS that support logging: https://nsis.sourceforge.io/Special_Builds#Advanced_logging and copy the contained files into the corresponding NSIS installations folders

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:

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

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

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"

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 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.)
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 SetCompressor /SOLID lzma 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