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Rodrigo Juarez for Coding Coach

Posted on • Edited on

Chocolatey, a better way to install software on windows

This post is aimed primarily to software developers using windows. You should have basic knowledge about your operation system.

When you need to install a new tool, you will have the issue to try to find the location to download it, get the latest version for your SO, and so on.

Trying to improve the user experience related to managing your software installation, Chocolatey comes to the rescue.

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This piece of software will allow you to use the windows command line to install, update or uninstall your favorite tools and programs.

You can see a curated list of available packages here.

Install instructions are available in the following link.

In a nutshell, open a PowerShell CLI in administrator mode and execute the following command:

iwr https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1 -UseBasicParsing | iex
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If you got an error message about running scripts disabled in your system, just run this in your current PowerShell window (more info):

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
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After this, open your windows command prompt as Administrator and use the choco -? command to see more information.
For example, I can install ConsoleZ with:

choco install consolez
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Or update it with:

choco upgrade consolez
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Usually, the same installer will add the program to the path, so, in this case, use the console command to open your new installed software.

Top comments (1)

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Yogeswari Narayasamy • Edited

Thank you, now I understand what chocolatey is. I had to use it while installing docker and the instructions were overwhelming. I did eventually manage to get docker engine running but it was without actually comprehending what I did.