The Windows Package Manager (also known as winget) is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

package manager A package manager or package-management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner. A package manager deals w ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

for

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on ...

and

Windows 11 Windows 11 is the latest major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released in October 2021. It is a free upgrade to its predecessor, Windows 10 (2015), and is available for any Windows 10 devices that meet the new Windows 11 ...

. It consists of a

command-line A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive command (computing), commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invokin ...

utility and a set of services for installing applications.Windows Package Manager Preview , Windows Command Line
/ref>

Independent software vendors An independent software vendor (ISV), also known as a software publisher, is an organization specializing in making and selling software, as opposed to computer hardware, designed for mass or niche markets. This is in contrast to in-house softwa ...

can use it as a distribution channel for their software packages.

History

Windows Package Manager was first announced at the Microsoft Build developer conference in May 2020. Before deciding to develop Windows Package Manager, the team behind it explored

Chocolatey Chocolatey is a machine-level, command-line package manager and installer for software on Microsoft Windows. It uses the NuGet packaging infrastructure and Windows PowerShell to simplify the process of downloading and installing software. In A ...

, Scoop,

Ninite Ninite (; codenamed Volery during private beta stage) is a package management system offering that enables users to automatically install popular applications for their Windows operating system. It enables users to make a selection from a list o ...

, AppGet,

Npackd This is a list of notable software package management systems, categorized first by package format (binary, source code, hybrid) and then by operating system family. Binary packages The following package management systems distribute apps in binar ...

and the

PowerShell PowerShell is a task automation and configuration management program from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell and the associated scripting language. Initially a Windows component only, known as Windows PowerShell, it was made open-sou ...

-based

OneGet NuGet (pronounced "New Get")And The Winner Is, NuGet
haacke ...

. After the announcement of winget, the developer of AppGet, Keivan Beigi, claimed that Microsoft interviewed him in December 2019 under the pretense of employment and acquiring AppGet. After talking with Beigi, Microsoft allegedly ceased communication with him until confirming one day before the launch of winget that they would not be hiring him. Beigi was dismayed at Microsoft's lack of attribution of AppGet. The release of winget led Beigi to announce that AppGet would be discontinued in August 2020. Microsoft responded with a blog post crediting a number of winget's features to AppGet. Microsoft released version 1.0 of Windows Package Manager on May 27, 2021. The Microsoft Community Repository included over 1,400 packages at that date.

Overview

The winget tool supports installers based on EXE, MSIX, and MSI. The public ''Windows Package Manager Community repository'' hosts

manifest file A manifest file in computing is a file containing metadata for a group of accompanying files that are part of a set or coherent unit. For example, the files of a computer program may have a manifest describing the name, version number, license and t ...

s for supported applications in

YAML YAML ( and ) (''see '') is a human-readable data-serialization language. It is commonly used for configuration files and in applications where data is being stored or transmitted. YAML targets many of the same communications applications as Ext ...

format.GitHub - microsoft/winget-pkgs: The Microsoft community Windows Package Manager manifest repository
/ref> In September 2020, Microsoft added the ability to install applications from the

Microsoft Store Microsoft Store (formerly known as Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It started as an app store for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform ...

and a command

auto-completion Autocomplete, or word completion, is a feature in which an application predicts the rest of a word a user is typing. In Android and iOS smartphones, this is called predictive text. In graphical user interfaces, users can typically press the tab ...

feature. To reduce the likelihood of non-Microsoft-approved software (see

vendor lock-in In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs. The use of open standards and alternativ ...

), including

malicious software Malware (a portmanteau for ''malicious software'') is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, dep ...

, making its way into the repository and onto the target machine, Windows Package Manager uses

Microsoft SmartScreen SmartScreen (officially called Windows SmartScreen, Windows Defender SmartScreen and SmartScreen Filter in different places) is a cloud-based anti-phishing and anti-malware component included in several Microsoft products, including operating sys ...

static analysis Static analysis, static projection, or static scoring is a simplified analysis wherein the effect of an immediate change to a system is calculated without regard to the longer-term response of the system to that change. If the short-term effect i ...

SHA256 SHA-2 (Secure Hash Algorithm 2) is a set of cryptographic hash functions designed by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and first published in 2001. They are built using the Merkle–Damgård construction, from a one-way compression ...

hash validation and other processes. The winget client

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comment (computer programming), comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a Computer program, p ...

and the community manifest repository are licensed under

MIT License The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, high license co ...

and hosted on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, co ...

Commands

Example

The following example searches for and installs variable . winget install --id=$PKG_ID -e

Package ID Examples

Visual Studio Code Visual Studio Code, also commonly referred to as VS Code, is a source-code editor made by Microsoft with the Electron Framework, for Windows, Linux and macOS. Features include support for debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code compl ...

, a code editor from Microsoft: *

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macO ...

: "Winget PKG of Google Chrome
https://winget.run/pkg/Google/Chrome
/ref> *

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current a ...

: *

Brave Brave most commonly refers to: *Brave, an adjective for one who possesses courage *Braves (Native Americans), a EuroAmerican stereotype for Native American warriors Brave(s) or The Brave(s) may also refer to: Film and television * ''Brave'' (199 ...

: *

Vivaldi Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741) was an Italian composer, virtuoso violinist and impresario of Baroque music. Regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, Vivaldi's influence during his lifetime was widespre ...

References

External links

Windows Package Manager , Microsoft Docs
* * {{Microsoft FOSS 2020 software Command-line software Free package management systems Free software programmed in C++ Microsoft free software Software using the MIT license Windows-only free software