vscode-nsis

Language syntax, snippets, formatter and build system for Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS), with language intelligence provided by nsis-lsp.

Screenshot of NSIS in Visual Studio Code with Hopscotch theme

• Language intelligence, provided by the server:
  • code actions
  • completions
  • document symbols
  • find references
  • go-to-definition
  • on-hover information
  • rename symbol
  • signature help
• Language syntax for NSIS and NSIS Language Files
• Snippets for core NSIS commands, variables and predefines
• Snippets for core plug-ins
• Snippets for core libraries (“Useful Headers”)
• NSIS Diagnostics
• Drunken NSIS
• Formatting
• Build Tools
• Environment Variables
• Converting between NSIS language files and JSON, using NSIS: Convert Language File

You can further extend NSIS support with snippets for third-party plug-ins.

Launch Quick Open, paste the following command, and press Enter

ext install idleberg.nsis

With shell commands installed, you can use the following command to install the extension:

$ code --install-extension idleberg.nsis

Alternatively, you can download the packaged extension from the Open VSX Registry or install it using the ovsx command-line tool:

$ ovsx get idleberg.nsis

Released packages bundle the language server for your platform, so there is nothing else to install. On platforms without a prebuilt binary, install the server yourself and the extension will find it on your PATH:

$ cargo install nsis-lsp

With most commands, you can specify available options before completion. For instance, rather than completing RequestExecutionLevel and then specifying an option, you can directly choose RequestExecutionLevel user from the completion menu.

To complete compile time commands, variables or predefines, make sure to omit special characters like !, $ and brackets:

• include completes to !include
• INSTDIR completes to $INSTDIR
• NSIS_VERSION completes to ${NSIS_VERSION}

However, you have to type __LINE__ to complete to ${__LINE__}.

There are several special cases for your convenience:

• MB_OK completes to MessageBox MB_OK "messagebox_text"
• onInit completes to a Function .onInit block
• LogicLib completes to !include "LogicLib.nsh"

Fuzzy syntax completions that try to iron out some of the inconsistencies in the NSIS language, for instance word order. The name is taken from the Sublime Text package of the same name.

Examples:

Interchangable word order of NSIS language and library functions

• ReadFile completes to FileRead
• INIStrRead completes to ReadINIStr
• SetSectionText completes to SectionSetText
• SetLog completes to LogSet
• FirstFind completes to FindFirst
• ${LineFind} completes to ${FindLine}

Scripts are formatted by the language server. To do so, run Format Document or adjust your settings for auto-formatting.

Example

{
	"editor.formatOnSave": true,
	"[nsis]": {
			"editor.defaultFormatter": "idleberg.nsis"
	},
}

The formatter is tweaked through the nsis.formatter.* settings — commentStyle, endOfLine, printWidth, singleQuote and trimEmptyLines. Indentation is not among them, since the formatter uses the editor's tabSize and insertSpaces.

Before you can build, make sure makensis is in your PATH environment variable. Alternatively, you can specify the path to makensis in your user settings.

Example:

{
	"nsis.makensis.path": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\NSIS\\makensis.exe"
}

To trigger a build, select NSIS: Save & Compile” from the command-palette or use the default keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+B. The strict option treats warnings as errors and can be triggered using Ctrl+Alt+Shift+B.

On macOS and Linux, makensis can be run through Wine by enabling nsis.wine.runWithWine. The setting is ignored on Windows.

You can tweak your default settings by editing your user settings.

If you prefer Visual Studio Code's built-in Task Runner to build scripts, you can create tasks.json in the project root using the NSIS: Create Build Task command from the command-palette.

makensis reads NSISDIR and NSISCONFDIR from the environment. Both are picked up from your system-wide environment variables, and either can be overridden per platform through the terminal.integrated.env.* setting, so a workspace that already sets them for its terminal does not have to set them a second time.

{
	"terminal.integrated.env.windows": {
		"NSISDIR": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\NSIS"
	}
}

Additionally, you can pass special environment variables prefixed with NSIS_APP_ to your installer script. They will be treated like normal definitions and will be stringified at compile-time.

$ export NSIS_APP_ENVIRONMENT=development

# installer.nsi
!if ${NSIS_APP_ENVIRONMENT} == "development"
  DetailPrint "Valuable Debug Information"
!endif

This extension defaults to UTF-8 with BOM (utf8bom) for NSIS files. If you are working with older scripts, you can override the encoding in your workspace settings:

Example

{
	"[nsis]": {
		"files.encoding": "windows1252"
	}
}

Per workspace: Add "files.encoding": "windows1252" to the [nsis] section in your .vscode/settings.json Per file: Click the encoding label in the status bar and choose Save with Encoding

• node-makensis
• vscode-electron-builder
• atom-language-nsis

Files in this repository fall under the Apache 2.0 License.