Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

[ewemoa]

Anyone tried Chocolatey?

...and anyone successfully using it portably?

[wraith808]

I use it all the time.  What do you mean by 'portably'?

[Tuxman]

I had tried it before it was cool.

There are some packages in it which don't work well due to missing "gcc" or something (maybe that's a package maintainer fault though); other than that, it's probably the best solution if you try to get something like apt.

[wraith808]

^ That is the packagers fault.  Each one is going to behave differently depending on how it's packaged.

I also thought that maybe I should clarify what I mean by "what do you mean by portably".  Did you mean the repo?  Or the application installs?

[ewemoa]

I use it all the time.  What do you mean by 'portably'?

Thanks for the comments.

I'd rather not "install" on a system but rather be able to have it and the associated apps be "portable" in the sense of "portable apps" so for example transportable on usb media.

AFAICT, the typical set up requires a specific environment variable be set on the system (got the feeling that just via a .bat file was insufficient).

Looking at some of the supported functionality I guess even if Chocolatey itself could be made portable, quite a few of the apps would not be (at least some aren't packaged in a "portable" way).

[wraith808]

I use it all the time.  What do you mean by 'portably'?

Thanks for the comments.

I'd rather not "install" on a system but rather be able to have it and the associated apps be "portable" in the sense of "portable apps" so for example transportable on usb media.

AFAICT, the typical set up requires a specific environment variable be set on the system (got the feeling that just via a .bat file was insufficient).

Looking at some of the supported functionality I guess even if Chocolatey itself could be made portable, quite a few of the apps would not be (at least some aren't packaged in a "portable" way).

That is correct.  There are those that have .portable installs, some that have .install installs, and those that have nothing to differentiate.  Some use silent scripts, and others do something as simple as a wget to get the installer, then run it. (screenshot captor has a package, and it does exactly that).  It really depends on the packager, and the facility of the application/installer. 

What you might be able to do is create a portable repository that the chocolatey executable points to in order to install.  But I haven't tried that.

For more information, you can look at https://github.com/chocolatey/choco/wiki/ChocolateyFAQs#what-distinction-does-chocolatey-make-between-an-installable-and-a-portable-application and the FAQ in general has a lot of questions similar to yours.

[ewemoa]

Thanks for the idea and FAQ pointer.

I imagine existing packages are likely to provide hints too

[ewemoa]

Creating the installation script often doesn't seem too bad, but appropriate upgrading and uninstalling seems like it can be a lot more work.

Have modified / created some packages to work (err, install anyway) with a number of "portable" versions of apps with some success and also configured the local Chocolatey to use a local folder of appropriate .nupkg files as a source.

I guess this might be one way to start picking up some PowerShell


On a side note, came across BoxStarter and Puppet -- anyone tried these out?

[ewemoa]

As a possible alternative to Chocolatey, now trying scoop -- a bit bumpy, but this seems a better fit for the sorts of things I'm likely to use.

Other candidates of interest were just-install and Npackd, but haven't tried them yet.

[Tuxman]

Any URL?

[ewemoa]

Ah, sorry:

  Scoop
  just-install
  Npackd

[Tuxman]

Hmm, scoop has broken SSL.

Now it seems that none of them has a similar package availability. :/

[ewemoa]

Yes, perhaps something is not right with the certificate situation for Scoop.

just-install.it doesn't appear to provide https access, but at least their repository does.


According the top page of just-install's repository:

I wanted something simple, something that would download an installer and run it silently. That's why I wrote just-install.

Npackd seems to be heavily installer-oriented too and also tied to the registry.

I try to stay away from installers as much as possible, and so far Scoop seems to cover what I'd use -- with a few additional 'manifests' that weren't too hard to write:

Code

{
    "homepage": "https://www.getwox.com/",
    "license": "MIT",
    "version": "1.2.0-beta",
    "url": "https://github.com/qianlifeng/Wox/releases/download/v1.2.0-beta/Wox-1.2.0-beta.zip",
    "hash": "46666ad948db735a7e683efe01da2b61b28b768e7775a518dffbf6fbfc493f2a",
    "extract_dir": "",
    "bin": [ "Wox.exe" ]
}

Code

{
    "homepage": "https://leiningen.org/",
    "license": "EPLv1",
    "version": "2.5.2",
    "url": "https://raw.github.com/technomancy/leiningen/2.5.2/bin/lein.bat",
    "hash": "bcf0d7a8bec3dadfa57fec60c86dd14b276aa3eaacb584cd3a2241a252ef0b46",
    "bin": [ "lein.bat" ],
    "post_install": [
        "lein self-install"
    ],
    "depends": [ "curl", "openjdk" ]
}

[panzer]

ChocolateyGUI:
https://chocolatey.org/packages/ChocolateyGUI

Boxstarter:
http://boxstarter.org/

win-get:
http://windows-get.sourceforge.net/

Oneget:
https://github.com/OneGet/oneget

Gow:
https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow

NuGet:
http://www.nuget.org/

WAPT:
http://dev.tranquil.it/wiki/WAPT_-_apt-get_pour_Windows/en

Zero Install:
http://0install.net/

or just use Ninite:
https://ninite.com/

[IainB]

@panzer's list above shows that there are several options for third-party non-proprietary application AUMs (Auto-Update Managers) in the market, and an exhaustively comprehensive list could well be much longer. By "non-proprietary" I am excluding here the proprietary AUMs, such as, for example (say), the Toshiba AUM that is part of the OEM installation on Toshiba laptops and which is designed for maintaining consistency/currency of the OEM-branded components of desktop client images.

From experience, updating apps tends to potentially be a chore and a time bandit, and so, over the years I have often wanted to use non-proprietary application AUMs. However, after trialing several, I gave up as I found that they generally tended to have some unavoidable common limitations which, taken together, made them not-so-useful for my purposes.
For example, the main ones for me:

• Performance impacts: They sometimes became a CPU priority and resource hog - though they might otherwise have worked quite well.
• Rigid defaults: They would be designed to only install apps in their default location - whereas my peculiar requirements might often necessitate that some apps be installed in my own designated program folders, rather than, for example (say), Program Files.
• Scope constraints: They were generally unable to manage a lot of the apps for which I required to have automated updates.

Having said that, AUMs are well worth considering (especially where $FREE) as they could potentially serve a useful purpose for maintaining consistency/currency of desktop client images, either in a home environment/network or a small business environment/network, and they could definitely help reduce the chore and time bandit factors.

The most prominent AUM - and one that most Windows users would tend to be familiar with - is Microsoft's Windows Update, which updates not only the OS files but also Microsoft apps - e.g., including (say) MS Security Essentials (now combined with the Windows Firewall as Windows Defender), Skype, the MS Office Pro suite, and MS IE/MS Edge browsers.

Worth thinking about?:
Microsoft's Windows Update seems to be a seriously thorough and intelligent AUM, and if apps developers could somehow be given a standards-based approach to piggybacking on Windows Update, then that could be a really useful approach worth consideration for the future.
However, I suspect that it would be unlikely to happen, simply because of conflicting marketing objectives - for example, I recall that the FREE version of the excellent CCleaner defaulted to automatically checking for updated versions of itself on startup, and it tells you if there is an updated version available. If you then tell it to go get the update, it takes you to a web page where it seems to deliberately put an in-your-face default option to upgrade to CCleaner Pro and deliberately obscure/confuse access to the download link for the FREE version. You eventually find it minimised in the small print - e.g., Piriform.com (as at 2015-09-19), where you have to scroll down to the small print (no Big Fat Button, like for the paid version) where it merely says, for example, Piriform.com as an optional site to download from.

[attach=#]

Some people (not me, you understand) might say that this could be considered as deliberately misleading, shonky and borderline legitimate commercial behaviour, and arguably only one step removed from the Candyware concept, but hey, if it gets a sale, then whether the punter bought it by mistake is neither here nor there, right? - however I couldn't possibly comment.

[wraith808]

AUM in normal techical ling = Repo(sitory) for clarity of terminology.  And I wouldn't really view Windows Update as a repo, as you don't install from it- only update.  Microsoft had said to be developing a repo manager for Windows 10, but it is sadly not present.

By the same token, I'd not consider nuget to be in the same conversation, as it says in it's definition on nuget.org

NuGet is the package manager for the Microsoft development platform including .NET.

with development being the key word.  I'd put it in the same category as PsGet, as they're for very specific uses.

[wraith808]

Zero Install looks quite nice.  The decentralized nature is intriguing, and it actually looks like something that might fit ewemoa's reqs.

UPDATE: Scratch that part about the reqs.  It requires .NET for the windows version.

UPDATE2: You might be able to build it from sources... it' uses OCAML, so I'm not sure why the windows version requires .NET.

[Tuxman]

.net is a part of Windows anyway, right?

[wraith808]

.net is a part of Windows anyway, right?

It is.  But don't know what version it requires.  You'll need to have that particular version of .NET.  And all installations might not have it.  Usually .NET dependent programs aren't said to be 'truly portable', even though for all intents and purposes they might be.

[wraith808]

More info: Gow is a shell, not a package manager.  It's an alternative for windows to Cygwin.  But it was a welcome find for other reasons, even so.  I'd stopped using Cygwin because it was so huge.  Gow is apparently small.

[wraith808]

More info: OneGet is included in windows 10.  Go to the powershell console, and type Get-PackageProvider to see the providers available.  So I guess that maybe this was what MS was intending to include, but it wasn't finished for public consumption?

It can also install chocolatey packages: Get-PackageSource -Provider chocolatey retrieves the package source.  It looks quite interesting, but I have to do more research.

UPDATE: Get-Package from the powershell prompt shows *everything* you have installed.  It's pretty cool!

[wraith808]

More info: Win-Get and Windows-Get seem abandoned.  The last update date on them is quite old, and looking at the repos, the versions of the software available is likewise ancient.

[ewemoa]

More info: Win-Get and Windows-Get seem abandoned.  The last update date on them is quite old, and looking at the repos, the versions of the software available is likewise ancient.

Hadn't seen Windows-Get, but unmaintained / abandoned was how it seemed to me for Win-Get and WPKG so I didn't mention them earlier.

[ewemoa]

IIRC, I'd avoided ZeroInstall earlier because of .NET dependencies and the seeming requirement of having to sign packages (nice to have optionally, but being forced even for my own local purposes seemed too much).

Now that I'm not looking after XP machines, the .NET requirement issue may not be relevant, and perhaps the package signing situation is different now (or may be I misunderstood earlier).

May be worth another look...

[ewemoa]

UPDATE2: You might be able to build it from sources... it' uses OCAML, so I'm not sure why the windows version requires .NET.

The github repository had the following instructions for building:

  https://github.com/0install/0install#user-content-windows-installation

No idea why .NET is necessary -- may be there are convenient libraries for working with Windows that are being leveraged?

But perhaps the version required doesn't require any additional installing as Tuxman hinted at.