Tip: "Apt-Get" for Windows

edited September 2020 in General

https://chocolatey.org/

Recently I found an equivalent to "apt-get" for Windows, Chocolatey is The Package Manager for Windows, you can install, upgrade, uninstall multiple programs at same time, like apt-get, some examples:

...
////https://chocolatey.org/packages/blender
$ choco install blender
////https://chocolatey.org/packages/freecad/0.19.0.22366-dev
$ choco install Freecad --pre 
////https://chocolatey.org/packages/sweet-home-3d
$ choco install sweet-home-3d
...

... and this is not just for programs because add-on, plug-ing, script, macros, complements, extensions, etc, can be managed from there.

in context, if a windows user wants to update their programs, need open each URL and download individually each program and this can be a pain, with choco you just need do this:

choco upgrade all -y

... could be a help for new users.

fbpyr

Comments

  • @jtm2020hyo and @lukas thank you for hinting at the chocolatey package. :-)
    (In our company it helps me a lot to be able to install and update BlenderBIM
    including dependencies (e.g. latest Blender version) with a single command line call)
    Let me just add one thing, that could help discoverability:
    Currently we build the blenderbim-nightly package automatically each night(utc)
    if there were commits the night before. To make this package available without much
    delay we marked it as pre-release for chocolatey, so it does not need to run
    through the full checks of chocolatey but is available quickly.
    That means it is not as easy to find as regular non-pre-release packages:
    In choco from cli: choco search blenderbim --pre one would need to
    add --pre to find or install choco install blenderbim-nightly --pre it.
    (update luckily does not need that).
    On chocolatey.org website search, one needs set the search option under the
    search bar: Include Prerelease instead of Stable Only

  • There is also winget which I actually prefer.

    fbpyr
  • Thank you @Cyril , I hadn't heard of winget yet.
    As I read on their repo readme https://github.com/microsoft/winget-pkgs
    it would currently not directly be applicable for BlenderBIM packaging though, as they write:
    "Note: At this time installers must either be MSIX, MSI or .exe application installers.
    Compressed .zip files and fonts are not currently supported."
    So for bbim one would need to build one of these first.

    On chocolatey we provide the original blender addon zip directly from IfcOpenShell repo release.
    (and additional simple Python logic, which we use to enable BlenderBIM inside Blender.
    The supplied package is run though a number of virus scanners and is test installed in a container.
    Only if none of these fail, the package is accessible.)

    At the very bottom of the winget repo page, under https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli#datatelemetry they write:
    "...winget.exe client is instrumented to collect usage and diagnostic (error) data and sends it to Microsoft..."
    which personally makes me not want to package for that service.

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