Windows Package Manager

[free780]

Windows Package Manager 1.0 | Windows Command Line (microsoft.com)

 

Key Point

 

Version 1.0 of Windows Package Manager will soon ship as an automatic update via the Microsoft Store for all devices running Windows 10, version 1809 and later.

 

Group Policies are available if you don't want users install vscode etc.

 

It could be useful on a per machine basis to update 3rd party apps or deploy them.

[mavhc]

1400 packages vs chocolately's 8500, but a good start

 

Choco uses xml for import whereas winget uses json

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/package-manager/winget/import

 

Won't have to bother making a LAN copy of the installers, I wonder if there's any way to cache things though

 

https://github.com/mavhc/choco-school I'll probably update my scripts to work with winget once it takes off.

[jthompson]

Definitely looks interesting. Just trying to get my head around the idea of a community repo and the potential security implications. Presumably the software would be being downloaded directly from the publisher and not held in the repo, but you'd still have to trust the integrity of that repo to not be serving you anything malicious.

 

Do you know what sorts of Group Policy options are going to be available? If it could serve as functionally equivalent to the existing MSI deployment options, only able to take care of non-MSI packages as well, that would be really handy.

[mavhc]

There's gpo stuff to configure repos etc, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=103034

 

Packages are just commands to dl and install/uninstall/upgrade, and check the hash. They're added via a git pull request and authorised by Microsoft.

 

So you'd just have a startup script that said winget import , and a scheduled task for winget upgrade -all

[mavhc]

Now 2680 packages. (winget search | measure)

 

Still no way to cache. When run interactively it's pausing for error boxes to appear.

 

More failures than chocolately currently. And it's not caching the downloads, so it redownloads the installer each time.

 

It got confused because I seem to have 2 versions of FreeCAD installed, and it keeps trying to upgrade the old one to the new one, that's already installed.

 

Also tux paint/stamps seems to have no version number, so it installs that every time it's run

 

85 things installed that aren't in Winget, 45 things that are, about 25 things that are in chocolately but not in winget (winget export file.txt)

 

"winget list" will list everything that's installed, but winget export will show you what it knows about.

 

Worth trying a winget upgrade --all on a test machine though

[mavhc]

4496 packages today

winget search --name `"`" --source winget | measure

 

vs 9681 for Choco

 

Main discovery: Even though SRP is enabled, because Store apps have been allowlisted, users can install store apps (like firefox, which then allows extensions, like VPN....)

 

There's a GPO to disable that: Computer>Admin>windows components>Desktop App Installer>Enable app installer MS Store Source - Disabled

 

This does not uninstall previously installed apps though

[jthompson]

Looking again at how we can maybe use winget as our main app deployment tool (all via group Policy). Currently still relying largely on MSIs deployed via GPO, but managing updates is obviously not fully automated.

 

Is anyone doing this successfully and/or willing to share any pointers? For instance, can winget commands be happily run under system context, etc.?

[mavhc]

Because winget is a Store package it's not available a) for SYSTEM and b) the first time you log in for x minutes, so it's rather useless

 

Still using choco instead

[jthompson]

Because winget is a Store package it's not available a) for SYSTEM and b) the first time you log in for x minutes, so it's rather useless

 

Still using choco instead

 

Yeah, this is the vibe I'm getting from fruitless web searching.