read from a file while installation in nsis but do no copy it on the destination pc

Question

I want to display the version on the installation dialog pages of nsis, by reading the version from a text file, but i have to copy this on the destination pc where the executable is run, but i want that the text file is not copied on the user's pc but is only read from,

that is,

i want to include this file into the exe, and read text from it to display on the nsis dialog pages, but not copy it anywhere on the pc wherever the exe is run?

is this possible? or is there any other way of doing this?

Answer 1

In general, you can use $PLUGINSDIR constant. It is de-facto temporary directory on target system and you can put there something and use. Following code will copy the file into the temporary directory on the target machine, but whole directory will be deleted after the installation completion. ( InitPluginsDir is needed somewhere before)

InitPluginsDir 
File /oname=$PLUGINSDIR\blah.txt "..\myfile.txt"

But in your case, it could be better to solve it in some other way. You can define some constant containing version number and use it in the code, can't you? The !define command could be in generated file so you can automate it...