Inno Setup

Copyright (C) 1997-2024 Jordan Russell. All rights reserved. Portions Copyright (C) 2000-2024 Martijn Laan. All rights reserved. For conditions of distribution and use, see LICENSE.TXT.

Source code README

Getting Started

1. Obtain sources

   First you need to download the sources from Github. From the command line do:

   > git clone https://github.com/jrsoftware/issrc.git is
   > cd is
   > git submodule init
   > git submodule update
   

   If you don't have the Git client (git), get it from:

   https://git-scm.com/

   To update your sources from the command line do:

   > git pull
   > git submodule update
   

   To be able to contribute to Inno Setup, clone your own fork instead of cloning the main Inno Setup repository, commit your work on topic branches and make pull requests. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

2. Install Embarcadero Delphi

   We compile all of Inno Setup's projects under Delphi 11.3 Alexandria.

   If you do not have access to this version of Delphi, you should be able to compile the projects on other versions, however complete compatibility is NOT guaranteed. We try to make Inno Setup compilable on the other versions when possible, but do not have the resources to test every change on every Delphi version.

   There's a free version of Delphi available called the Community Edition. See https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/free-download.

3. Install Microsoft HTML Help Workshop

   Install Microsoft HTML Help Workshop if you haven't already done so. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/desktop/htmlhelp/microsoft-html-help-downloads and http://web.archive.org/web/20160201063255/http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/A/9/0A939EF6-E31C-430F-A3DF-DFAE7960D564/htmlhelp.exe

   Note: Microsoft HTML Help Workshop is only needed to be able to compile the help files.

4. Build Inno Setup

   Unfortunately, Embarcadero has removed command line compilation support from the Community Edition, which means there's two different build scripts.

   Community Edition: To build all files run build-ce.bat and follow the instructions.

   Otherwise: To build all files run build.bat and follow the instructions.

   To just compile Inno Setup run compile.bat and follow the instructions. This batch file cannot be used with the Community Edition, open Projects\Projects.groupproj instead.

   To just compile the Inno Setup help file and its web version run ISHelp\ISHelpGen\compile.bat and ISHelp\compile.bat and follow the instructions. The former batch file cannot be used with the Community Edition, open Projects\Projects.groupproj instead.

   To just compile the Inno Setup Preprocessor help file and its web version run ISHelp\ISHelpGen\compile.bat and Projects\Ispp\Help\compile.bat and follow the instructions. The former batch file cannot be used with the Community Edition, open Projects\Projects.groupproj instead.

Component Installation

If you intend to view or modify the Setup project's forms, you must install the following component units, which can be found in the Components directory.

• BidiCtrls
• BitmapImage
• FolderTreeView
• NewCheckListBox
• NewNotebookReg
• NewProgressBar
• NewStaticText
• PasswordEdit
• RichEditViewer

If you intend to view or modify the Compil32 project's forms, you must additionally install the following components.

• DropListBox
• NewTabSet

The Components directory contains a Components project which you can use to install all these components.

If you only want to edit code, then you may skip installation of the components, and choose "Cancel" if the Delphi IDE tells you a class can't be found.

Overview

Inno Setup consists of six projects:

Compil32 - This is the GUI front-end for the compiler. Compil32 does not do the actual compilation itself; it relegates it to ISCmplr.dll. If the ISCmplr project is changed, you normally don't need to recompile Compil32 since it's essentially a text editor, and is not affected by internal changes to the compiler.

ISCC - This is the command-line front-end to the compiler. Like Compil32, it depends on ISCmplr.dll to do the actual compiling.

ISCmplr - This is a DLL which is loaded by Compil32 and ISCC to compile scripts. The actual compiler code is in Compile.pas. See CompInt.pas for the various structures and function declarations used to interface to the DLL.

Setup - This is the actual "Setup" program. It displays the wizard, and performs all (un)installation-related tasks.

SetupLdr - This is the "setup loader." It self-extracts a compressed Setup program into the user's TEMP directory and runs it from there. It also displays the "This will install..." and /HELP message boxes.

ISPP\ISPP - This is a DLL implementing Inno Setup's preprocessor interface.

How do the projects link together?

• ISCmplr, ISPP, Setup, and SetupLdr share the unit Struct.pas. This unit contains various data structures and constants shared by the projects. If Struct.pas is changed, you usually will need to recompile ISCmplr, ISPP, Setup, and SetupLdr so that everything is in synch.

• There are more units which are shared between projects. Search the .dpr files of the projects if you aren't sure if a project uses a particular unit.

• The ISPP help file uses various copies of other Inno Setup files. To synch these run ISPP\Help\synch-isfiles.bat.

Source code tips

• When building the projects in Debug mode it outputs to Projects\Bin and when debugging it will run from within this directory. To prepare this directory with some extra files you must run Projects\Bin\synch-isfiles.bat.

• When debugging the Setup project you should first build all projects in Debug mode, then run the Compil32 project and compile the Debug.iss script which should open automatically, and finally open and run the Setup project. This way you can simulate an actual installation while running under the Delphi debugger.

• When building the projects in Release mode it outputs to Files.

• All of the forms in the Setup project, with the exception of Main.dfm, have Scaled set to False. This is because they dynamically scale themselves at run-time by calling a function named InitializeFont.

• A note for those curious: The Setup Compiler creates single EXE Setups by first creating the SETUP.EXE as usual, then concatenating the SETUP.0 and SETUP-1.BIN to the end of the SETUP.EXE, and finally modifying an internal data block in SETUP.EXE so it knows it's in "single EXE" form.

• To debug the uninstaller first run Setup.exe to completion with the /DETACHEDMSG command line parameter set. Afterwards copy uninst000.dat and uninst000.msg as setup.dat and setup.msg to the Projects\Bin directory in your issrc path. Then open the Setup project and set the command line parameters to /UNINSTMODE "/SECONDPHASE=<your issrc path\Projects\Bin\Setup.exe" and start debugging. Note: each time setup.dat and setup.msg will be deleted if you allow the uninstaller to complete so make sure to keep copies.

Precompiled executables and libraries

The source code contains several precompiled and signed executables and libraries:

Files\isbunzip.dll, Files\isbzip.dll - Compiled by Visual Studio 2005 from the bzlib directory in the Iscompress repository.

Files\isunzlib.dll, Files\iszlib.dll - Compiled by Visual Studio 2005 from the zlib-dll directory in the Iscompress repository.

Files\islzma.dll, Files\islzma32.exe, Files\islzma64.exe - Compiled by Visual Studio 2005 from the Projects\Src\Lzma2\Encoder directory.

Files\isscint.dll - Compiled by Visual Studio 2005 from Scintilla 2.22 source code with scintilla-2.22-patch.txt applied.

Projects\Helper\x64\Release\Helper.exe, Projects\Src\HelperEXEs.res - Compiled by Visual Studio 2005 from the Projects\Helper directory and then stored in a compiled resource file.

Projects\Src\LzmaDecode\LzmaDecodeInno.obj - See Projects\Src\LzmaDecode\compiling.txt.

Projects\Src\Lzma2\Decoder\ISLzmaDec.obj, Projects\Src\Lzma2\Decoder\ISLzma2Dec.obj - See Projects\Src\Lzma2\Decoder\compiling.txt.

Examples\MyProg.exe, Examples\MyProg-x64.exe, Examples\MyProg-Arm64.exe - Compiled by Visual Studio 2022 from the Examples\MyProg directory.

Inno Setup-specific editing guidelines for the help files

• When mentioning something the user would type in a script, e.g. "MinVersion", surround it by <tt></tt> so that it's displayed in the Courier New font. This is a convention used throughout the help file. Example: <tt>MinVersion</tt>

Setting up Continuous Integration

Inno Setup's source code includes a GitHub workflow that performs unattended builds upon push events, it requires some setting up, though.

Note: The following instructions assume that you have a correctly-licensed version of Delphi installed into C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\Studio\20.0. This may not be a Community Edition because it does not support command line compilation. Also ensure your current Delphi license still allows you to copy a subset of the Delphi files to another machine for the specific purpose of supporting unattended builds.

First, generate an encrypted .zip file containing the files needed to build Inno Setup using 7-Zip:

cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\Studio\20.0
"C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" a -mx9 -mem=AES256 -p"<password>" ^
	%USERPROFILE%\issrc-build-env.zip ^
	bin\dcc32.exe bin\rlink32.dll bin\lnk*.dll ^
	lib/win32/release/Sys*.dcu lib/win32/release/*.res ^
	lib/win32/release/System.*.dcu lib/win32/release/System.Generics.*.dcu ^
	lib/win32/release/System.Internal.*.dcu lib/win32/release/System.Net.*.dcu ^
	lib/win32/release/System.Net.HttpClient.*.dcu lib/win32/release/System.Win.*.dcu ^
	lib/win32/release/Vcl.*.dcu lib/win32/release/Vcl.Imaging.*.dcu ^
	lib/win32/release/Winapi.*.dcu

Then, upload this encrypted file somewhere public, e.g. by attaching it to a comment in a GitHub issue. After that, add this URL as a new repository secret (at https://github.com/YOUR-USER-NAME/issrc/settings/secrets/actions), under the name ISSRC_BUILD_ENV_ZIP_URL, and the password as ISSRC_BUILD_ENV_ZIP_PASSWORD.

Finally, indicate that your fork of the repository has those secrets, by adding the topic has-issrc-build-env (click the gear icon next to the "About" label at https://github.com/YOUR-USER-NAME/issrc to add the topic).

Once that's done, you're set! The next time you push a branch to your fork, the workflow will be triggered automatically.