electron-builder: NSIS uninstaller doesn't kill child processes

Version: 19.54.0

Target: Windows x64

NSIS uninstaller checks the app is still running and kills it by nsProcess::KillProcess before deleting the installed files. However, nsProcess::KillProcess seems neither emitting any window-alll-closed and quit events, nor kills child (and grand child) processes. Hence, child processes spawned by the app keep running and block files are deleted.

Using taskkill instead of nsProcess::KillProcess might solve this problem.

I found some related discussions:

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 6 years ago
Comments: 15 (5 by maintainers)

Commits related to this issue

fix: NSIS uninstaller doesn't kill child processes Close #2516 — committed to develar/electron-builder by develar 6 years ago
fix(nsis): ensure that installer process is not killed as child process Close #2516 — committed to develar/electron-builder by develar 6 years ago
fix(nsis): ensure that installer process is not killed as child process Close #2516 — committed to develar/electron-builder by develar 6 years ago
fix(nsis): NSIS uninstaller doesn't kill child processes Close #2516 — committed to develar/electron-builder by develar 6 years ago

Most upvoted comments

tree kill is not used now — now app is killed softly at first and it should be enough to terminate child process.

develar on Mar 10, 2018

Hi @develar , I am still seeing the problem of installer apparently being killed during autoupdate with 20.4.1.

Caveat: 2 years or so ago the installer didnt finish a running application on its own yet so I had added the following as custom NSIS include do do this from my end:

!macro customInit
    ; SHUT DOWN APP IF CURRENTLY RUNNING
    ${GetProcessInfo} 0 $0 $1 $2 $3 $4
    ${if} $3 != "${APP_EXECUTABLE_FILENAME}"
        ${nsProcess::FindProcess} "${APP_EXECUTABLE_FILENAME}" $R0
        ${If} $R0 == 0
            ;MessageBox MB_OK "App currently running - going to shutdown to install new version"
            ${nsProcess::CloseProcess} "${APP_EXECUTABLE_FILENAME}" $R0
            Sleep 5000
            ${nsProcess::KillProcess} "${APP_EXECUTABLE_FILENAME}" $R0
            Sleep 3000
        ${EndIf}
        ${nsProcess::Unload}
    ${endIf}
!macroend

this led to the error message

Plugin not found, cannot call ${nsProcess::FindProcess}
Error in macro customInit on macroline 4
Error in script "<stdin>" on line 131 -- aborting creation process
  • exited          command=makensis.exe code=1 pid=1040
  • async task error error=
                       Error: \tmp-electron-builder\nsis\nsis-3.0.1.13\Bin\makensis.exe exited with code 1
                           at ChildProcess.childProcess.once.code (C:\cygwin64\home\sshd\builds\code\screenawar

a few days ago (while having worked fine for close to 2 years). So I took it out and now see the installer closing the original running install and not installing the new version (no logs being produced). I.e.: not sure if it is a coincidence (me removing the custom nsis exit-running-app code while this ticket was coming up) or whether the fix 12 hours ago is maybe not complete yet.

Gladly let me know if there is any other info I could provide to shed some light on this.

consense on Mar 9, 2018

@jkawamoto @develar set {detached: true, stdio: ’ignore’}，This just means “On Windows, setting options.detached to true makes it possible for the child process to continue running after the parent exits. The child will have its own console window.”,But if you kill the process tree（with ‘’taskkill /t‘’），all the processes will be killed ，because the parent-child relationship between processes will not change； moreover，‘’taskkill /t‘’ a is higher than “PID ne $pid” of priority,so it will still kill installation process.

As shown: pid-4816 is a child processes of pid-4046，pid-4816 is installation process，pid-4046 is main application,and “好药店.exe” is APP_EXECUTABLE_FILENAME. pid-4816, pid-4046, pid-7512（another child process），They are all killed qq 20180309093703

IDrinkMoreWater on Mar 9, 2018