使用 Homebrew 安装 makensis

项目链接

• 主页

命令和别名

• makensis

项目历史

NSIS grew out of Nullsoft's installer work and reached public release as NSIS v1.0f on July 31, 2000, according to the official release notes. The project later moved through SourceForge-hosted development and kept its own scripting language, plug-in model, compression backends, and Windows-focused installer conventions.

The 3.0 release in July 2016 was a major modernization point: the official notes describe it as adding optional Unicode support, Windows 10 support, and a long list of compatibility and feature work while keeping support for the same Windows family. Subsequent releases continued the practical package-maintainer work of keeping installers small, signed, localizable, and compatible with modern Windows behavior.

采用历史

NSIS became popular with open source and shareware projects because it produced a single redistributable `.exe` installer from text scripts and bundled files. For Unix-like package managers, `makensis` matters because maintainers can build Windows release artifacts from CI or developer machines without installing the full Windows GUI workflow.

The official wiki and download pages show a long-running project with current releases, archived NSIS 1 and 2 releases, documentation, examples, and a plug-in ecosystem. That long tail made NSIS scripts a package-maintainer artifact in their own right: projects often carry `.nsi` files next to source code, and build systems invoke `makensis` as a release step.

使用方式

`makensis` compiles `.nsi` installer scripts. The scripting reference describes `.nsi` files as text files containing commands, comments, variables, sections, pages, and installer behavior; build systems typically pass the script to `makensis` and publish the generated Windows installer.

为什么软件包爱好者会关心

Package nerds care about `makensis` because it is a bridge between source packaging and Windows distribution: the same project can publish tarballs, native packages, and a Windows installer from checked-in release recipes. It also explains why a Windows installer compiler appears in Unix package managers such as Homebrew.

时间线

• 2000: NSIS v1.0f is first publicly released.
• 2016: NSIS 3.0 is released with optional Unicode support and Windows 10 support.
• 2020: NSIS 3.06.1 marks the project's 20th anniversary.
• 2026: The official download page lists NSIS 3.12 as a current release.

Related projects

• Related installer systems include Inno Setup, WiX Toolset, Windows Installer/MSI tooling, and cross-platform packaging flows that invoke `makensis` from release automation.

来源

• https://nsis.sourceforge.io/Docs/AppendixF.html
• https://nsis.sourceforge.io/Docs/Chapter4.html
• https://nsis.sourceforge.io/Download
• https://nsis.sourceforge.io/Main_Page
• https://sourceforge.net/p/nsis/code/HEAD/tree