Desktop shortcuts?

[Trilarion]

Are they supported? If so, how to do it?

If not, could we get them (with an option in the installer like "Create Shortcut on Desktop", using the same icon)?

[takluyver]

They're not, because I consider the start menu the place to put application shortcuts, and it annoys me when installers drop shortcuts on the desktop. At least in older versions of Windows, you could easily drag a shortcut from the start menu to the desktop if you wanted that; I don't know if this still works with the start screen.

If you want to do them anyway, you can use a custom template and extend the install_shortcuts block. Or, to make it optional, extend the sections block and add a section called e.g. "Desktop Shortcut".

I don't plan on adding this as an option in Pynsist, because for several reasons I like to keep installers as simple as possible:

1. Users shouldn't have to think about much during installation. Installing an app should be easy and standardised. Click, click, click, find it in the start menu.
2. The more complex installers are, there more ways they can go wrong. Testing and debugging installer code is painful, so I want as little of it as possible.
3. Pynsist is a wrapper to make a powerful tool (NSIS) easier to use in a specific situation. Convenience wrappers are always under pressure to offer more of the thing they wrap, one little piece at a time. But if you're not careful, you end up with a bloated monster that's just an extra layer of complexity around the thing it wraps. Pynsist is already more complex than I'd like. So if it doesn't do what you want, I encourage you to use it as a starting point to do your own thing, either with custom templates, or simply generating an NSI file once and then editing it by hand afterwards.

I've written all that because I'm now going to close this issue, and I know it can be frustrating to have a request promptly declined with little explanation. ;-)

[Trilarion]

Very thorough explanation. I fully understand and respect your decision. You even hint at how this could be included manually (provide own template or modify the NSI file afterwards). This is more than sufficient for me.

If this request occurs more often, your post above is a perfect FAQ answer. Thanks.

[takluyver]

Thanks :-). I might put a variant of that into the docs somewhere to point people to.