8 ms·

A command-line installer for Windows

120 points by anuragsoni 8y ago

pmalynin 8y ago
Reading the headline made of think of installing Windows via the command-line (say via imagex). Which is actually very useful in certain tricky situations when you mess up an install. Once I didn't have enough space on a flash drive to install Windows via an ISO...but I did have a liveboot ubuntu system and 2 spare drives. Interestingly enough imagex and WIM tools were ported to linux, and it was a surprisingly easy experience.
- naner 8y ago
  Probably a nitpick but wimlib isn't a port. It's a separate implementation based on reverse engineering the Windows tools and format.
- devereaux 8y ago
  I did that too! The world certainly has changed now that installing Windows is easier to do from Linux! I'm also looking towards using the winre partition to store wins and some kind of iterative snapshots for PITR recovery. Any suggestion is welcome!
  - toast0 8y ago
    There was a tool called Unattended [1], built to install Windows from Linux via PXE booting. I've used it a couple of times, but it left off at Windows XP (and Server 2003), which is a bit too far beyond for me now. Anyway, I think Windows 7, and definitely Windows 10 are easy to boot from USB, which is almost as good as a network boot. [1] http://unattended.sourceforge.net/advanced.php http://unattended.sourceforge.net/advanced.php
  - fxfan 8y ago
    Windows has always been easier to install than Linux lol. Also wmi's have existed forever. Most Windows specific knowledge is found closed with enterprise sysadmins and not shared out in the open- who should be blamed is your choice. I blame ms
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  Just a note, ImageX is superceded by DISM, and both of them utterly fail at keeping extended attributes (despite the command line flags). So what you restore won't be the same thing as what you backed up. (I don't know of any tool that handles all of EAs, reparse points, etc. correctly.)
  - acqq 8y ago
    Do you have any examples of failures? I’d like to know what specifically is not working.
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      Extended attributes? That is the specific example. Create a file with EAs and see if you can back up and restore it with the same EAs.
      - acqq 8y ago
        Where are the NTFS EA used, if that's what you're writing about? I can't find anything except: https://flatcap.org/linux-ntfs/ntfs/attributes/ea.html https://flatcap.org/linux-ntfs/ntfs/attributes/ea.html "Used to implement the HPFS extended attribute under NTFS." Is your complaint is that the tools that are used to make the image of the installation files of the Windows don't include that? I assume that $EA entries don't exist in the installation files of Windows, for which the DSIM tool is used (and it's surely not an universal backup tool). And how do you read or write these? And what do you use them for? I was able to find only ZwSetEaFile and ZwQueryEaFile which are documented for kernel-mode drivers? Are there any plain user-level API's? https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1096/ https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1096/ I also find: "it may (be) worth noting that Windows does not contain any api that can be used to remove extended attributes."
        mehrdadn 8y ago
        WSL uses them for one (so good luck backing up WSL installations) https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/06/15/wsl-file-system-support/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/06/15/wsl-file-sys... Other stuff does too, e.g. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/ifs/kernel-extended-attributes https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/if... Those are user-level APIs as well, though usually called via NtQueryEaFile and NtSetEaFile. And (part of) my complaint is that DISM's /EA flag is broken.
glitchc 8y ago
Changing the Execution Policy triggers a UAC prompt...
- hug 8y ago
  Not if you define the scope for execution policy.
  - glitchc 8y ago
    At my place of work, IT has taken the scorched earth route and blocked Powershell altogether.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
rkagerer 8y ago
>>Scoop reads the README for you<< I'd rather just have a clear and concise README. Better yet, if vendors distributed their applications as single bundled EXE files like back in the day. Don't take this the wrong way, I haven't used scoop and I have nothing against it. Just wish there weren't a need for it.
aynawn 8y ago
It's easy to add new bucket entries by adding json files. Also if I understand it correctly, their auto update feature allows many apps to be self maintained i.e. you don't have to update the json when a new version comes out.
FavouriteColour 8y ago
This looks pretty good. At the moment I'm using MSYS2 on my work machine (have to use Windows). Any thoughts on this installation method? iex (new-object net.webclient).downloadstring('https://get.scoop.sh') I'm not sure IT Security here would be too impressed.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  `curl | sh`, take 2:) I hope nobody would be impressed, unless there's some safety features that aren't obvious here.
  - smittywerben 8y ago
    FYI powershell comes with curl now (and ssh).
    - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
      I'm aware of openssh on NT being a thing now, but last I saw I thought powershell's "curl" was just an alias to their equivalent, which means that ex. options don't actually match for anything non-trivial. (IIRC, they did this with lots of commands; `ls` gets mapped to a local equivalent, but `ls -lahr *.foo` would not do what you think it should)
      - smittywerben 8y ago
        It's the real curl[0]. I actually like the aliases and they've even added ctrl-shift paste in the options. Maybe they should be the default. The windows filesystem still makes no sense but that's an NT issue (dropbox cant sync con.sh???). SSH has a surprisingly native feel but graphical apps (vim, screen) still have rendering problems, and the ssh-agent daemon isn't set up right by default. Until they make Windows LTSC unusable, it's not _too_ horrible right now. But for a serious programming project there's still no question for me (but fix your damnable sound drivers Ubuntu). [0] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/01/18/tar-and-curl-come-to-windows/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/01/18/tar-...
tracker1 8y ago
Curious how this compares with Chocolatey
- alexeldeib 8y ago
  I’ve been converting as much as I can from Chocolatey to scoop, mostly because the install experience (no admin/uac). I had a great experience, especially after adding the “extras” bucket. The last time I tried (a year or more ago) I found a lot of apps missing. Seems that has improved quite a bit.
- skrebbel 8y ago
  Linux dependency managers are just that: they manage dependencies. Most Linux programs expect particular libraries to be installed system-wide. Chocolatey was modeled after this concept, with packages that need other packages, volunteer package maintainers, a hosted package repository, etc. All this comes with a fair amount of complexity. Most Windows applications, however, are fully self contained. They ship their dependencies right inside the installer. The key insight behind scoop is that on Windows you don't need a dependency manager. You just use need something that can download and extract installers without all the next, next, ok nonsense and without needing admin rights. So that's scoop. It downloads an installer from the program's website, extracts the files to a directory under your homedir, and sets up a few PATHs and symlinks. It has no repository that needs to be hosted and maintained: after all, installers come straight from the source. And the definitions of which program can download which version from where and what should happen next are tiny JSON files managed on scoop's GitHub repo. Want to tell scoop about a new version of your favorite program? Create a PR. Chocolatey is a great effort that has taught many Windows users that yes, we can have that apt-get goodness too. But I hope that Scoop takes over as the de facto install-software tool. It's so much simpler with very few downsides. Its design is spectacularly good.
  - Zekio 8y ago
    Scoop has support for dependencies, and it is really easy to fit into PowerShell scripts :)
serbrech 8y ago
Why handle windows only? This was posted recently on HN : http://gofi.sh http://gofi.sh - Fish - A systems package manager like homebrew but cross-platform
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  Why in the world does it symlink stuff into C:\ProgramData? Normal Windows installers don't do that.
  - Zekio 8y ago
    I guess it is for cross user install support but that can be achieved in other ways easily
Jaruzel 8y ago
I struggle with all the alternate 'installation managers' for Windows. Microsoft has already done this with their MSI system (Although even they have basically abandoned it in favour of the APPX stuff). MSI was a good format, and could be installed silently with the right switches (/q/b), support alternate installation options via MST files, and even patches via MSP files. Even the specific DLL dependencies ('DLL Hell') got fixed via manifest files/attributes. Microsoft published the MSI specification early on, and encouraged everyone to support it. However, the core problem with Windows software is there isn't a primary software repository for all approved and tested software, like there is for *nix platforms. Ideally that's what needs to be fixed first before yet more client-end installers get created. To fix this, based on the current landscape, all third-party client-end installers need to support all existing third-party repositories. Even better, everyone agrees on a standard JSON format (or whatever) for their repository manifest and all third-party installers understand that. Then just like Linux et al. all you have to do is add the new repository URL to your installers config, and all the packages advertised within are immediately available. It seems really simple to fix - but people have to co-operate.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  I think the real problem is Microsoft doesn't care. It's probably a higher priority than Windows Backup, but only just.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- stewbrew 8y ago
  "the core problem with Windows software is there isn't a primary software repository for all approved and tested software" scoop uses portable binaries provided from the original source. For many people that's good enough. Maybe chocolatery is more to your taste.
- stefan_ 8y ago
  MSI was the format where you needed to keep the original installer around merely to uninstall it and they eventually hacked-in a stripped down version of MSI installers because well, someone realized how ridiculous that was? Good riddance.
cyptus 8y ago
you can use windows build-in powershell feature "Install-Package" with package provider "chocolatey" just like this on a fresh windows install: Set-ExecutionPolicy unrestricted Get-PackageProvider -name chocolatey Install-Package chromium Install-Package 7zip ...
- jarvelov 8y ago
  That sounds very neat. Haven't used Windows in ages but likely have to in the future, this might make it more manageable. Is there any drawbacks to this considering this installation method isn't listed on the installation page on their website?[0] The closes I found to this installation method was: "When you have Visual Studio 2010+ and the NuGet extension installed (pre-installed on any newer versions of Visual Studio), you can simply type the following three commands and you will have Chocolatey installed on your machine." Install-Package chocolatey Initialize-Chocolatey Uninstall-Package chocolatey [0] https://chocolatey.org/install#installing-chocolatey https://chocolatey.org/install#installing-chocolatey
- ledneb 8y ago
  I discovered Chocolatey during a Windows stint at work ~3 years back and found their package quality to be very poor. I'd go as far as saying packages had a 50% chance of leaving you with a usable installation of software. We ended up changing provisioning scripts to download .msi installers directly and run them with appropriate switches. I also remember their website having a lot of "maintainers required" notices - I got the impression that the situation was a little desperate. Has package quality improved? Is Chocolatey a genuinely reliable way to install software, now?
  - kapep 8y ago
    I've been using it since about 2 years and never had any problems installing anything. I guess I'm mostly using popular well-maintained packages though, so YMMV if you are installing some more obscure software. I'm not sure about the maintainer situation. Some packages get updates quite regularly while other packages are always a few versions behind the latest release.
  - 8y ago
GordonS 8y ago
I realise I can find packages by scouring the GitHub repos[0][1], but I'd also appreciate a web search UI, especially as the number of available packages grows. This could also let me easily discover what version(s) are available etc. I can't seen to find it, but does such a UI already exist? [0] https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/tree/master/bucket https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/tree/master/bucket [1] https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop-extras/tree/master/bucket https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop-extras/tree/master/buck...
- frou_dh 8y ago
  https://repology.org/ https://repology.org/ It's a common web interface on top of many package repositories, including this one.
  - GordonS 8y ago
    Thanks, I've never come across this before, and it looks really useful for finding Linux packages, even if it's not exactly the most user-friendly UI!
marmaduke 8y ago
MinGW ships with pacman, I can’t see why one would need this.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  Because not everybody needs all the stuff that comes with MinGW? Why install all that stuff if they don't intend to use it, just to get a package manager designed for another platform? Apart from the fact that the MinGW port of pacman is designed for the MinGW environment only, and therefore doesn't necessarily integrate all that well with the rest of the Windows system, the packages it provides are mainly ports of software from other systems (chiefly Linux and BSD) rather than native Windows software. Doesn't seem all that relevant.
  - marmaduke 8y ago
    > Looking for familiar Unix tools? Is the leading line in the motivational paragraph for this tool, and its example usage is > scoop install curl Your comment doesn’t seem all that relevant.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Most Windows devs don't care about MinGW.
noderat 8y ago
I've been exclusively using Linux/*BSD (Slackware/Gentoo/Arch) for personal use since upgrading from my K6-2 500 to an AMD Barton 2600+ because finding, installing and managing "trustworthy" software is easier. Linux has hardware compatibility challenges and software with bugs, but so does Windows. I don't, however, have to search through monstrosities like Download.com. I don't have to figure out what software may have a new release that is important to me. Critical dependencies are handled automatically. Every distribution may handle these in slightly different ways but these basics hold true. Every time I've had to use Windows I've spent an enormous amount of time searching for and installing things. Once installed I then discover the software has changed to a limited free trial or some other nonsense that ends in another search, install and disappointment loop. It's tools that have shown up in the last few years like scoop that have made dealing with Windows at least somewhat tolerable.
Tsubasachan 8y ago
Ha one important reason why windows won was because you never had to touch the keyboard ever again.
- oblio 8y ago
  A lot of the people that thing was meant for are now using smartphones and tablets. PCs will be for power users and office workers.
aboutruby 8y ago
I wouldn't put so much trust in this unknown package manager, Chcolatey or Homebrew on Windows would be far better choices.
- vips7L 8y ago
  You don't know what you're talking about.
soapdog 8y ago
My main machine broke two days ago and I had to buy and setup a new one quickly to resume working. I used scoop to install all applications I needed to work. It was easy and all the apps stay organized in their folder inside my home folder. I find scoop very refreshing and easy to use compared to other windows alternatives. I really recommend it to people, specially developers.
stuaxo 8y ago
How does it compare to chocolatey ?
alexeiz 8y ago
Scoop together with a large collection of portable software is a godsend in a corporate environment, where you don't have admin privileges on your work machine and getting up-to-date software approved and installed by your IT department is a royal pain in the ass. I can confidently say that were it not for Scoop, I'd be in order of magnitude less productive at my work due to the lack of necessary software. Scoop is one of those things that makes a potentially unbearable work environment a productive and even enjoyable one. Yes, Scoop is not perfect. Sometimes it breaks and I have to manually fix it (it likes to uninstall outdated packages before downloading and verifying the checksum of the updated ones). But the time spent on fixing it is easily recovered by boost of productivity that it provides.
jpambrun 8y ago
Scoop is about the only thing that works on my stupidly locked work laptop. Unfortunately, McAfee AV just started deleting scoop scripts randomly. God I hate windows.

120 points by anuragsoni 8y ago

Reading the headline made of think of installing Windows via the command-line (say via imagex). Which is actually very useful in certain tricky situations when you mess up an install. Once I didn't have enough space on a flash drive to install Windows via an ISO...but I did have a liveboot ubuntu system and 2 spare drives. Interestingly enough imagex and WIM tools were ported to linux, and it was a surprisingly easy experience.

naner 8y ago
Probably a nitpick but wimlib isn't a port. It's a separate implementation based on reverse engineering the Windows tools and format.
devereaux 8y ago
I did that too! The world certainly has changed now that installing Windows is easier to do from Linux! I'm also looking towards using the winre partition to store wins and some kind of iterative snapshots for PITR recovery. Any suggestion is welcome!
- toast0 8y ago
  There was a tool called Unattended [1], built to install Windows from Linux via PXE booting. I've used it a couple of times, but it left off at Windows XP (and Server 2003), which is a bit too far beyond for me now. Anyway, I think Windows 7, and definitely Windows 10 are easy to boot from USB, which is almost as good as a network boot. [1] http://unattended.sourceforge.net/advanced.php http://unattended.sourceforge.net/advanced.php
- fxfan 8y ago
  Windows has always been easier to install than Linux lol. Also wmi's have existed forever. Most Windows specific knowledge is found closed with enterprise sysadmins and not shared out in the open- who should be blamed is your choice. I blame ms
mehrdadn 8y ago
Just a note, ImageX is superceded by DISM, and both of them utterly fail at keeping extended attributes (despite the command line flags). So what you restore won't be the same thing as what you backed up. (I don't know of any tool that handles all of EAs, reparse points, etc. correctly.)
- acqq 8y ago
  Do you have any examples of failures? I’d like to know what specifically is not working.
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    Extended attributes? That is the specific example. Create a file with EAs and see if you can back up and restore it with the same EAs.
    - acqq 8y ago
      Where are the NTFS EA used, if that's what you're writing about? I can't find anything except: https://flatcap.org/linux-ntfs/ntfs/attributes/ea.html https://flatcap.org/linux-ntfs/ntfs/attributes/ea.html "Used to implement the HPFS extended attribute under NTFS." Is your complaint is that the tools that are used to make the image of the installation files of the Windows don't include that? I assume that $EA entries don't exist in the installation files of Windows, for which the DSIM tool is used (and it's surely not an universal backup tool). And how do you read or write these? And what do you use them for? I was able to find only ZwSetEaFile and ZwQueryEaFile which are documented for kernel-mode drivers? Are there any plain user-level API's? https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1096/ https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1096/ I also find: "it may (be) worth noting that Windows does not contain any api that can be used to remove extended attributes."
      - mehrdadn 8y ago
        WSL uses them for one (so good luck backing up WSL installations) https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/06/15/wsl-file-system-support/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/06/15/wsl-file-sys... Other stuff does too, e.g. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/ifs/kernel-extended-attributes https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/if... Those are user-level APIs as well, though usually called via NtQueryEaFile and NtSetEaFile. And (part of) my complaint is that DISM's /EA flag is broken.

glitchc 8y ago

Changing the Execution Policy triggers a UAC prompt...

hug 8y ago
Not if you define the scope for execution policy.
- glitchc 8y ago
  At my place of work, IT has taken the scorched earth route and blocked Powershell altogether.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

rkagerer 8y ago

>>Scoop reads the README for you<< I'd rather just have a clear and concise README. Better yet, if vendors distributed their applications as single bundled EXE files like back in the day. Don't take this the wrong way, I haven't used scoop and I have nothing against it. Just wish there weren't a need for it.

aynawn 8y ago

It's easy to add new bucket entries by adding json files. Also if I understand it correctly, their auto update feature allows many apps to be self maintained i.e. you don't have to update the json when a new version comes out.

FavouriteColour 8y ago

This looks pretty good. At the moment I'm using MSYS2 on my work machine (have to use Windows). Any thoughts on this installation method? iex (new-object net.webclient).downloadstring('https://get.scoop.sh') I'm not sure IT Security here would be too impressed.

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
`curl | sh`, take 2:) I hope nobody would be impressed, unless there's some safety features that aren't obvious here.
- smittywerben 8y ago
  FYI powershell comes with curl now (and ssh).
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    I'm aware of openssh on NT being a thing now, but last I saw I thought powershell's "curl" was just an alias to their equivalent, which means that ex. options don't actually match for anything non-trivial. (IIRC, they did this with lots of commands; `ls` gets mapped to a local equivalent, but `ls -lahr *.foo` would not do what you think it should)
    - smittywerben 8y ago
      It's the real curl[0]. I actually like the aliases and they've even added ctrl-shift paste in the options. Maybe they should be the default. The windows filesystem still makes no sense but that's an NT issue (dropbox cant sync con.sh???). SSH has a surprisingly native feel but graphical apps (vim, screen) still have rendering problems, and the ssh-agent daemon isn't set up right by default. Until they make Windows LTSC unusable, it's not _too_ horrible right now. But for a serious programming project there's still no question for me (but fix your damnable sound drivers Ubuntu). [0] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/01/18/tar-and-curl-come-to-windows/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/01/18/tar-...

tracker1 8y ago

Curious how this compares with Chocolatey

alexeldeib 8y ago
I’ve been converting as much as I can from Chocolatey to scoop, mostly because the install experience (no admin/uac). I had a great experience, especially after adding the “extras” bucket. The last time I tried (a year or more ago) I found a lot of apps missing. Seems that has improved quite a bit.
skrebbel 8y ago
Linux dependency managers are just that: they manage dependencies. Most Linux programs expect particular libraries to be installed system-wide. Chocolatey was modeled after this concept, with packages that need other packages, volunteer package maintainers, a hosted package repository, etc. All this comes with a fair amount of complexity. Most Windows applications, however, are fully self contained. They ship their dependencies right inside the installer. The key insight behind scoop is that on Windows you don't need a dependency manager. You just use need something that can download and extract installers without all the next, next, ok nonsense and without needing admin rights. So that's scoop. It downloads an installer from the program's website, extracts the files to a directory under your homedir, and sets up a few PATHs and symlinks. It has no repository that needs to be hosted and maintained: after all, installers come straight from the source. And the definitions of which program can download which version from where and what should happen next are tiny JSON files managed on scoop's GitHub repo. Want to tell scoop about a new version of your favorite program? Create a PR. Chocolatey is a great effort that has taught many Windows users that yes, we can have that apt-get goodness too. But I hope that Scoop takes over as the de facto install-software tool. It's so much simpler with very few downsides. Its design is spectacularly good.
- Zekio 8y ago
  Scoop has support for dependencies, and it is really easy to fit into PowerShell scripts :)

serbrech 8y ago

Why handle windows only? This was posted recently on HN : http://gofi.sh http://gofi.sh - Fish - A systems package manager like homebrew but cross-platform

mehrdadn 8y ago
Why in the world does it symlink stuff into C:\ProgramData? Normal Windows installers don't do that.
- Zekio 8y ago
  I guess it is for cross user install support but that can be achieved in other ways easily

Jaruzel 8y ago

I struggle with all the alternate 'installation managers' for Windows. Microsoft has already done this with their MSI system (Although even they have basically abandoned it in favour of the APPX stuff). MSI was a good format, and could be installed silently with the right switches (/q/b), support alternate installation options via MST files, and even patches via MSP files. Even the specific DLL dependencies ('DLL Hell') got fixed via manifest files/attributes. Microsoft published the MSI specification early on, and encouraged everyone to support it. However, the core problem with Windows software is there isn't a primary software repository for all approved and tested software, like there is for *nix platforms. Ideally that's what needs to be fixed first before yet more client-end installers get created. To fix this, based on the current landscape, all third-party client-end installers need to support all existing third-party repositories. Even better, everyone agrees on a standard JSON format (or whatever) for their repository manifest and all third-party installers understand that. Then just like Linux et al. all you have to do is add the new repository URL to your installers config, and all the packages advertised within are immediately available. It seems really simple to fix - but people have to co-operate.

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
I think the real problem is Microsoft doesn't care. It's probably a higher priority than Windows Backup, but only just.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
stewbrew 8y ago
"the core problem with Windows software is there isn't a primary software repository for all approved and tested software" scoop uses portable binaries provided from the original source. For many people that's good enough. Maybe chocolatery is more to your taste.
stefan_ 8y ago
MSI was the format where you needed to keep the original installer around merely to uninstall it and they eventually hacked-in a stripped down version of MSI installers because well, someone realized how ridiculous that was? Good riddance.

cyptus 8y ago

you can use windows build-in powershell feature "Install-Package" with package provider "chocolatey" just like this on a fresh windows install: Set-ExecutionPolicy unrestricted Get-PackageProvider -name chocolatey Install-Package chromium Install-Package 7zip ...

jarvelov 8y ago
That sounds very neat. Haven't used Windows in ages but likely have to in the future, this might make it more manageable. Is there any drawbacks to this considering this installation method isn't listed on the installation page on their website?[0] The closes I found to this installation method was: "When you have Visual Studio 2010+ and the NuGet extension installed (pre-installed on any newer versions of Visual Studio), you can simply type the following three commands and you will have Chocolatey installed on your machine." Install-Package chocolatey Initialize-Chocolatey Uninstall-Package chocolatey [0] https://chocolatey.org/install#installing-chocolatey https://chocolatey.org/install#installing-chocolatey
ledneb 8y ago
I discovered Chocolatey during a Windows stint at work ~3 years back and found their package quality to be very poor. I'd go as far as saying packages had a 50% chance of leaving you with a usable installation of software. We ended up changing provisioning scripts to download .msi installers directly and run them with appropriate switches. I also remember their website having a lot of "maintainers required" notices - I got the impression that the situation was a little desperate. Has package quality improved? Is Chocolatey a genuinely reliable way to install software, now?
- kapep 8y ago
  I've been using it since about 2 years and never had any problems installing anything. I guess I'm mostly using popular well-maintained packages though, so YMMV if you are installing some more obscure software. I'm not sure about the maintainer situation. Some packages get updates quite regularly while other packages are always a few versions behind the latest release.
- 8y ago

GordonS 8y ago

I realise I can find packages by scouring the GitHub repos[0][1], but I'd also appreciate a web search UI, especially as the number of available packages grows. This could also let me easily discover what version(s) are available etc. I can't seen to find it, but does such a UI already exist? [0] https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/tree/master/bucket https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/tree/master/bucket [1] https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop-extras/tree/master/bucket https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop-extras/tree/master/buck...

frou_dh 8y ago
https://repology.org/ https://repology.org/ It's a common web interface on top of many package repositories, including this one.
- GordonS 8y ago
  Thanks, I've never come across this before, and it looks really useful for finding Linux packages, even if it's not exactly the most user-friendly UI!

marmaduke 8y ago

MinGW ships with pacman, I can’t see why one would need this.

zapzupnz 8y ago
Because not everybody needs all the stuff that comes with MinGW? Why install all that stuff if they don't intend to use it, just to get a package manager designed for another platform? Apart from the fact that the MinGW port of pacman is designed for the MinGW environment only, and therefore doesn't necessarily integrate all that well with the rest of the Windows system, the packages it provides are mainly ports of software from other systems (chiefly Linux and BSD) rather than native Windows software. Doesn't seem all that relevant.
- marmaduke 8y ago
  > Looking for familiar Unix tools? Is the leading line in the motivational paragraph for this tool, and its example usage is > scoop install curl Your comment doesn’t seem all that relevant.
pjmlp 8y ago
Most Windows devs don't care about MinGW.

noderat 8y ago

I've been exclusively using Linux/*BSD (Slackware/Gentoo/Arch) for personal use since upgrading from my K6-2 500 to an AMD Barton 2600+ because finding, installing and managing "trustworthy" software is easier. Linux has hardware compatibility challenges and software with bugs, but so does Windows. I don't, however, have to search through monstrosities like Download.com. I don't have to figure out what software may have a new release that is important to me. Critical dependencies are handled automatically. Every distribution may handle these in slightly different ways but these basics hold true. Every time I've had to use Windows I've spent an enormous amount of time searching for and installing things. Once installed I then discover the software has changed to a limited free trial or some other nonsense that ends in another search, install and disappointment loop. It's tools that have shown up in the last few years like scoop that have made dealing with Windows at least somewhat tolerable.

Tsubasachan 8y ago

Ha one important reason why windows won was because you never had to touch the keyboard ever again.

oblio 8y ago
A lot of the people that thing was meant for are now using smartphones and tablets. PCs will be for power users and office workers.

aboutruby 8y ago

I wouldn't put so much trust in this unknown package manager, Chcolatey or Homebrew on Windows would be far better choices.

vips7L 8y ago
You don't know what you're talking about.

soapdog 8y ago

My main machine broke two days ago and I had to buy and setup a new one quickly to resume working. I used scoop to install all applications I needed to work. It was easy and all the apps stay organized in their folder inside my home folder. I find scoop very refreshing and easy to use compared to other windows alternatives. I really recommend it to people, specially developers.

stuaxo 8y ago

How does it compare to chocolatey ?

alexeiz 8y ago

Scoop together with a large collection of portable software is a godsend in a corporate environment, where you don't have admin privileges on your work machine and getting up-to-date software approved and installed by your IT department is a royal pain in the ass. I can confidently say that were it not for Scoop, I'd be in order of magnitude less productive at my work due to the lack of necessary software. Scoop is one of those things that makes a potentially unbearable work environment a productive and even enjoyable one. Yes, Scoop is not perfect. Sometimes it breaks and I have to manually fix it (it likes to uninstall outdated packages before downloading and verifying the checksum of the updated ones). But the time spent on fixing it is easily recovered by boost of productivity that it provides.

jpambrun 8y ago

Scoop is about the only thing that works on my stupidly locked work laptop. Unfortunately, McAfee AV just started deleting scoop scripts randomly. God I hate windows.