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Winget–A package manager for Windows

I’ve been using Chocolatey for a long time as an easy way to get my Windows machine configured with all the software I need. With the release of version 1.1 of the Windows Package Manager(WinGet) I thought it was a good time to give it a try.

Installation

Chances are high that WinGet is already available on your machine. Open a terminal and type winget. If it is available you should see something like this:

If not, the Windows Package Manager is distributed with the App Installer from the Microsoft Store. You can also download and install the Windows Package Manager from GitHub, or just directly install the latest available released version.

Searching a package

The list of available packages is quite large(more than 2,600 packages in the Windows Package Manager app repository). Just run winget search <SomePackage> to see if the package you are looking for has available there.

For example let’s search for my favorite git client GitKraken:

PS C:\Users\bawu> winget search gitkraken
Naam      Id                Versie Bron
------------------------------------------
GitKraken Axosoft.GitKraken 8.1.0  winget

For packages inside the Microsoft store you don’t get  a readable id but a hash value instead:

PS C:\Users\bawu> winget search git
Name                                  Id                                         Version                    Source
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Learn Pro GIT                         9NHM1C45G44B                               Unknown                    msstore
My Git                                9NLVK2SL2SSP                               Unknown                    msstore
GitCup                                9NBLGGH4XFHP                               Unknown                    msstore
GitVine                               9P3BLC2GW78W                               Unknown                    msstore
GitFiend                              9NMNKLTSZNKC                               Unknown                    msstore
GitIt                                 9NBLGGH40HV7                               Unknown                    msstore
GitHub Zen                            9NBLGGH4RTK3                               Unknown                    msstore
GitLooker                             9PK6TGX9T87P                               Unknown                    msstore
Bhagavad Gita                         9WZDNCRFJCV5                               Unknown                    msstore
Git                                   Git.Git                                    2.33.1                     winget
GitNote                               zhaopengme.gitnote                         3.1.0         Tag: git     winget
Agent Git                             Xidicone.AgentGit                          1.85          Tag: Git     winget
TortoiseSVN                           TortoiseSVN.TortoiseSVN                    1.14.29085    Tag: git     winget
TortoiseGit                           TortoiseGit.TortoiseGit                    2.12.0.0      Tag: git     winget

Installing a package

After you have found the package you want, installing it is as easy as invoking the following command:

winget install --id <SomePackage>

Of course the real fun starts when you create a script that contains all the packages you need for you day-to-day work. Here is the script I’m using:

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