How do I replace strings in files with output from a script in NSIS?

Question

I have an installer working with NSIS that I'm updating at the moment. At several points, the installer needs to configure packages by replacing paths or values inside configuration files. Those configuration files have placeholders in them that are replaced by whichever deployment tool I'm using (NSIS for this specific case).

Scripts are mostly PHP scripts written to do some simple tasks that would have been excruciatingly complex in NSIS. For some reason though I keep going back to making my PHP scripts replace the placeholders by themselves instead of doing it in the NSIS script, which just isn't right. My code looks like:

nsExec::ExecToStack '"$INSTDIR\Php\php.exe" "$INSTDIR\Apache\tools\findport.php"'
pop $1 ; return code
pop $2 ; port number
!insertmacro _ReplaceInFile "Apache\conf\httpd.conf" "APACHE_PORT" "$2"

The _ReplaceInFile macro comes from http://nsis.sourceforge.net/ReplaceInFile and works just fine if I use $INSTDIR instead of $2 in the above example. Showing $2 in a MessageBox shows the port number just fine.

I guess I'm doing something wrong but I can't figure out what it is, and debugging is a pain with NSIS.

Thanks,

Anders Anders · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-12T06:20:24

I guess the lesson is to always verify paths before blaming the utility functions (Using Process Monitor is a good idea so you can tell if file-system redirection is getting in the way)

I would also like to add that using $instdir to hold anything other than a path is not a good idea since it will strip away invalid path characters behind your back. Use a normal register or a custom variable...

How do I replace strings in files with output from a script in NSIS?

1 Answers