How to set up NSIS

This guide shows you how to set up your environment to build the CEA Windows installer.

The installer is built with NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System). Download the latest stable release (3.x) from the NSIS site and install it with the default settings.

Required plugins

The CEA ships its Python environment as a .7z archive and uses the Nsis7z plugin to extract it (see setup/cityenergyanalyst.nsi:174). Without it the installer fails with:

Plugin not found, cannot call Nsis7z::ExtractWithDetails

Install both plugins by extracting them into the NSIS installation folder (typically C:\Program Files (x86)\NSIS):

NSIS7z plugin — 7-Zip archive extraction
Inetc plugin — HTTP downloads (used to fetch the VC++ redistributable)

Compiling the installer

Right-click setup/cityenergyanalyst.nsi in Windows Explorer and choose Compile NSIS Script.

If you get Can't open output file, create the setup/Output/ folder manually and retry.

ℹ️ Installer scripts that read $%CEA_VERSION% (an environment variable) expect that env var to be set in the shell before compilation. The CI workflows in .github/workflows/ set this automatically; for local builds, set it yourself before invoking the compile.

Source: view raw on GitHub ↗