A quick guide on Chocolatey!

What is Chocolatey?

Chocolatey is a software management system and is exactly what you need for a simpler course of action. If you are using Windows and wish to keep a track of all the different packages that you have or would want, Chocolatey or Choco will do the work for you. It is a package manager build for Windows which handles several tasks to make your life easier.

This package manager undertakes the job of installing, upgrading, or uninstalling your packages. It is known that package installation and management is a time-consuming process thus having Chocolatey software makes the procedure uncomplicated and trouble-free.

Photo by Ash Edmonds on Unsplash

Choco’s features:

• Helps to install various packages like Git Bash, NodeJs, Hugo etc all you have to do is tell choco!

If you want to install Hugo simply write this command in your PowerShell.

 > choco install hugo -confirm

• Keeps the version of packages in check. You can inspect the versions or upgrade them by simply telling choco to do it, keeping your system up to date.

Here is a command to upgrade Visual Studio 2019 by using Chocolatey.

> choco upgrade visualstudio2019community

• You can also uninstall any of the packages.

Just write this command

> choco uninstall nodejs

• choco info provides thorough information about a package

> choco info powershell 

• Search: This command does the task of searching for a package.

> choco search git

This is just the tip of the iceberg, many more commands are provided with chocolatey. These simplify the repetitive process of having a record of different packages and also helps in management.

Installing Chocolatey :

• If you have an antivirus like McAfee you should turn your Firewall OFF for a few minutes. Antivirus Software can sometimes block the installation process.
• Now Run your PowerShell as Administrator.
• Check your Get-ExecutionPolicy. If it’s Restricted, change it to Bypass.
• You can now copy the below command and run it.

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

• Once installation is completed just Type choco and Voila! choco is here to take care of you.

For a Non-Administrative Installation and to know more about Chocolatey head to https://chocolatey.org/