safing-portmaster/packaging

Generate Windows installer

Prerequisites

Earthly release prep step must be executed and the output dist folder should be present in the root directory of the repository. (Probably needs to be done on separate machine running linux or downloaded from the CI)

  earthly +release-prep

Building the installers

In the root directory of the repository, run the PowerShell script to generate the installers:

./packaging\windows\generate_windows_installers.ps1

This will output both .exe (NSIS) and .msi (WIX) installers inside the dist folder:

...\Portmaster\dist\windows_amd64\Portmaster_0.1.0_x64-setup.exe
...\Portmaster\dist\windows_amd64\Portmaster_0.1.0_x64_en-US.msi

Manual build

Prerequisites

Ensure you have Rust and Cargo installed. Install Tauri CLI by running:

cargo install tauri-cli --version "^2.0.0" --locked

Folder structure

Create binary and intel folder inside the tauri project folder and place all the necessary files inside. The folder structure should look like this:

...\Portmaster\desktop\tauri\src-tauri\binary
    assets.zip
    index.json
    portmaster-core.dll
    portmaster-core.exe
    portmaster-kext.dll
    portmaster-kext.sys
    portmaster.zip
    WebView2Loader.dll

...\Portmaster\desktop\tauri\src-tauri\intel
    base.dsdl
    geoipv4.mmdb
    geoipv6.mmdb
    index.dsd
    index.json
    intermediate.dsdl
    main-intel.yaml
    news.yaml
    notifications.yaml
    urgent.dsdl

Building the Installer

Navigate to the src-tauri directory:

cd desktop/tauri/src-tauri

Run the following commands to build the installers:

For both NSIS and WIX installers:

cargo tauri bundle

For NSIS installer only:

cargo tauri bundle --bundles nsis

For WIX installer only:

cargo tauri bundle --bundles wix

The produced files will be in:

target\release\bundle\msi\
target\release\bundle\nsis\

Debug MSI Installer

To see error messages during the build of the installer, run the bundler with the verbose flag:

cargo tauri bundle --bundles msi --verbose

To examine the logs during installation, run the installer with the following command:

msiexec /i "target\release\bundle\msi\Portmaster_0.1.0_x64_en-US.msi" /lv install.log