CPack #33455

purpleKarrot commented at 2:28 PM on September 22, 2025: contributor

The goal is to build all packages (both archives and installers) from a single configuration in CMake.

Packaging Instruction

Get a list of supported CPack generators for your platform with:

cpack --help

Run cpack from the build directory after a successful build to select multiple package generators:

cmake --build .
cpack -G '7Z;NSIS64'

Or build the package and/or package_source targets:

cmake --build . --target package
cmake --build . --target package_source

TODO:

Windows start menu entries
Option to launch after install
Component descriptions / dependencies / groups
Auxiliary files (readme, config)

DrahtBot commented at 2:28 PM on September 22, 2025: contributor

The following sections might be updated with supplementary metadata relevant to reviewers and maintainers.

Code Coverage & Benchmarks

For details see: https://corecheck.dev/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulls/33455.

Reviews

See the guideline for information on the review process. A summary of reviews will appear here.

Conflicts

Reviewers, this pull request conflicts with the following ones:

#33585 (cmake: Use builtin support for .manifest files by purpleKarrot)
#33247 (build: Remove CMAKE_SKIP_BUILD_RPATH and SKIP_BUILD_RPATH settings by 151henry151)
#33142 (test: Run bench sanity checks in parallel with functional tests by maflcko)
#31974 (Drop testnet3 by Sjors)
#30595 (kernel: Introduce C header API by TheCharlatan)
#30437 (ipc: add bitcoin-mine test program by ryanofsky)

If you consider this pull request important, please also help to review the conflicting pull requests. Ideally, start with the one that should be merged first.

hebasto commented at 1:05 PM on September 23, 2025: member

Run cpack from the build directory after a successful build to select multiple package generators:
cmake --build .
cpack -G '7Z;NSIS64'
Or build the package and/or package_source targets:
cmake --build . --target package
cmake --build . --target package_source

Is the reproducibility of these commands guaranteed, or can it be enforced somehow?

TODO:

Windows start menu entries

Option to launch after install

Component descriptions / dependencies / groups

Auxiliary files (readme, config)

Adjust the Guix build script as well?

in share/setup.nsi.in:56 in fe2dd036f4 outdated

  51 | -# Installer languages
  52 | -!insertmacro MUI_LANGUAGE English
  53 | -
  54 | -# Installer attributes
  55 | -InstallDir $PROGRAMFILES64\Bitcoin
  56 | -CRCCheck force

fanquake commented at 3:32 PM on September 23, 2025:

CRCCheck force

Where are options like this being passed now?

purpleKarrot commented at 6:56 AM on September 25, 2025:

CMake does not provide options for all NSIS attributes. For attributes that are strictly required, we may need to upstream support (see example).

However, we should also reconsider whether deviating from the defaults is truly necessary.

The default behavior for CRCCheck is to verify the CRC, but it also allows users to disable the check via a command-line option to the installer, which can be useful for testing purposes. Setting force removes that option. But what is the benefit? Does it provide any additional safety?

The default BrandingText gives credit to the installer authors (quote: "so that everybody can know why the installer didn't suck"). Is there a compelling reason to suppress this information?

I do not observe any effect from XPStyle on Windows 11.

The default behavior of ShowInstDetails is to display a loading bar with a "Show Details" button. This matches what users expect from other dialogs, such as file copying.

fanquake commented at 10:12 AM on October 13, 2025:

CMake does not provide options for all NSIS attributes. For attributes that are strictly required,

If migrating to do this the "CMake way" means less flexibility or giving up functionality because CMake doesn't support something, that tradeoff that should be mentioned in the PR description. This also means that any future option we might want to use, may also require workarounds, assuming that CMake support for new options will lag NSIS releases by some amount (or not be added at all), and our minimum required/used-in-Guix CMake versions are not the latest available.

fanquake commented at 10:12 AM on October 13, 2025: member

Adjust the Guix build script as well?

Yea, this wont Guix build:

HOSTS="x86_64-w64-mingw32" ./contrib/guix/guix-build
<snip>
[100%] Built target bitcoin-qt
Running symbol and dynamic library checks...
[100%] Built target check-symbols
make: *** No rule to make target 'deploy'.  Stop.

cmake: Make sure that install components are c identifiers

The NSIS generator of CPack has issues with special characters
in component names.
See: https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/cmake/-/issues/19982

751fd74900

cmake: fix formatting of `install` command

Make it more obvious that `DESTINATION` and `COMPONENT` are
artifact-options for the same artifact-kind.

59c38fe0bf

cmake: remove INSTALL_MAN option 49f16c5824

cmake: inline `install_binary_component` command f1112f2bba

cmake: add CPack configuration 0e9a696351

purpleKarrot force-pushed on Oct 14, 2025

cmake: Use CPack to build Windows installer 4866a4f989

wip ad41d4bcd9

purpleKarrot force-pushed on Oct 14, 2025

in share/setup.nsi.in:128 in ad41d4bcd9

 123 | -    DeleteRegValue HKCU "${REGKEY} (64-bit)" Path
 124 | -    DeleteRegKey /IfEmpty HKCU "${REGKEY} (64-bit)\Components"
 125 | -    DeleteRegKey /IfEmpty HKCU "${REGKEY} (64-bit)"
 126 | -
 127 | -    # Lingering since 77b2923f87131a407f7d4193c54db22375130403
 128 | -    Delete /REBOOTOK "$SMPROGRAMS\$StartMenuGroup\Bitcoin Core (testnet, 64-bit).lnk"

hodlinator commented at 2:08 PM on October 15, 2025:

How about porting over these parts from #33422?

Should be added to the TODO list or some "Limitations" section in PR description, unless CPack has some way of magically finding renamed copies of the program and dealing with this.

in contrib/guix/libexec/build.sh:262 in ad41d4bcd9

 257 | @@ -258,8 +258,8 @@ mkdir -p "$DISTSRC"
 258 |      # Make the os-specific installers
 259 |      case "$HOST" in
 260 |          *mingw*)
 261 | -            cmake --build build -j "$JOBS" -t deploy ${V:+--verbose}
 262 | -            mv build/bitcoin-win64-setup.exe "${OUTDIR}/${DISTNAME}-win64-setup-unsigned.exe"
 263 | +            (cd build && cpack -G NSIS64 ${V:+--verbose})
 264 | +            mv build/BitcoinCore-*.exe "${OUTDIR}/${DISTNAME}-win64-setup-unsigned.exe"

fanquake commented at 2:29 PM on October 15, 2025:

This would reintroduce the issue that #33158 worked around (#33126).

purpleKarrot commented at 2:33 PM on October 15, 2025:

Yes, ideally we should not rename the generated file but control how the generated file will be named in the first place.

DrahtBot added the label Needs rebase on Nov 4, 2025

DrahtBot commented at 5:32 PM on November 4, 2025: contributor

🐙 This pull request conflicts with the target branch and needs rebase.

DrahtBot commented at 7:36 AM on January 21, 2026: contributor

⌛ There hasn't been much activity lately and the patch still needs rebase. What is the status here?

Is it still relevant? ➡️ Please solve the conflicts to make it ready for review and to ensure the CI passes.
Is it no longer relevant? ➡️ Please close.
Did the author lose interest or time to work on this? ➡️ Please close it and mark it with one of the labels 'Up for grabs' or 'Insufficient Review', so that it can be picked up in the future.

fanquake commented at 2:00 PM on March 3, 2026: member

There's been a number of pings, and this still has a number of TODOs, so I'll close for now. Let us know if your still planning on working on this.

fanquake closed this on Mar 3, 2026