Tauri NSIS "makensis not found" on Windows in CI

Tauri builds the Windows installer with NSIS, fetching makensis and plugins into its cache. If that download is blocked or you are cross-building off Windows without the toolchain, the NSIS bundle step fails to find makensis.

What this error means

tauri build fails with "Error failed to bundle project: error running makensis.exe" or a message that the NSIS toolset could not be located or downloaded.

Error failed to bundle project: error running makensis.exe:
program not found
failed to bundle the application: nsis

Common causes

The NSIS toolchain download was blocked

Tauri downloads NSIS into its cache at build time; a proxy or network failure leaves makensis absent.

Cross-building the NSIS target off Windows

NSIS bundling is intended on Windows runners; building it elsewhere without the toolchain fails.

How to fix it

Build the NSIS target on a Windows runner

Run the Windows installer build on windows-latest where Tauri provisions NSIS.

jobs:
  win:
    runs-on: windows-latest
    steps:
      - run: npx tauri build --bundles nsis

Cache the Tauri NSIS toolchain

Persist the cache so makensis is fetched once and survives a flaky download.

- uses: actions/cache@v4
  with:
    path: ~/AppData/Local/tauri/NSIS
    key: tauri-nsis

How to prevent it

• Build NSIS bundles on Windows runners.
• Cache the Tauri NSIS toolchain directory.
• Allow the toolchain download through any proxy.

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