TL;DR

winget is a new tool published by Microsoft. It helps with software installation and management. winget can be used in scripts to automatically install software on Windows.

Motivation

Setup of a fresh OS can be tedious
Setup of multiple PCs can be even more tedious
Installers are distributed all over the internet and are hard to find
Installers from untrusted sources could contain malware
Installers could be outdated
Manual execution of installers need attention of a person

Prerequisites

Installed winget. You can get winget from:

Approach

The Windows Package Manager (aka winget) is a package manager from Microsoft for Windows. Similiar to apt or yum, winget helps with the process of installing, upgrading and removing applications. After installation, winget is run by the same name from a command prompt (cmd or powershell).

Search for Applications with winget search

PS C:\Windows> winget search Chrome
Name                 Id                         Version       Match
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Google Chrome        Google.Chrome              92.0.4515.131 Moniker: chrome
Google Chrome Beta   Google.Chrome.Beta         93.0.4577.18  Command: chrome
Google Chrome Dev    Google.Chrome.Dev          93.0.4577.18  Command: chrome
Stack                stack.stack                3.32.0        Tag: chrome
Brave                BraveSoftware.BraveBrowser 92.1.27.109   Tag: Chrome
Ginger Chrome        Saxo_Broko.GingerChrome    93.0.4529.0
Google Chrome Canary Google.Chrome.Canary       94.0.4589.2

Install Applications with winget install

PS C:\Windows> winget install --id=Google.Chrome -e
Found Google Chrome [Google.Chrome]
This application is licensed to you by its owner.
Microsoft is not responsible for, nor does it grant any licenses to, third-party packages.
Downloading https://dl.google.com/edgedl/chrome/install/GoogleChromeStandaloneEnterprise64.msi
██████████████████████████████  76.2 MB / 76.2 MB
Successfully verified installer hash
Starting package install...
Successfully installed

winget install can install a new browser without running Internet Explorer or Edge. 😋

With these commands, you can create scripts to jump-start your Windows setup. In order to install software silently use -h as a parameter and run winget in an elevated command prompt. Now the script can run without the need for manual intervention. I wrote some example scripts, which you can also find in this GitHub project.

Example Script to install common tool

# Install tools that support different use cases and are language and cloud-agnostic.
# Common Tools
winget install --id=Notepad++.Notepad++ -e -h
winget install --id=Mozilla.Firefox -e -h
winget install --id=Google.Chrome -e -h
# Common Dev Tools
winget install --id=Git.Git -e -h
winget install --id=Microsoft.VisualStudioCode -e -h
winget install --id=Microsoft.WindowsTerminal -e -h
# Kubernetes
winget install --id=Kubernetes.minikube -e -h
winget install --id=Mirantis.Lens -e -h

Example Script to install programming tools

# Install tools for different programming languages
# Python
winget install --id=Python.Python.3 -e -h
winget install --id=JetBrains.PyCharm.Community -e -h
# Java
winget install --id=AdoptOpenJDK.OpenJDK.11 -e -h
winget install --id=JetBrains.IntelliJIDEA.Community -e -h
# Go
winget install --id=GoLang.Go -e -h
winget install --id=JetBrains.GoLand -e -h

Example Script to install cloud administration tools

# Install tools for cloud administration
# AWS
winget install --id=Amazon.AWSCLI -e -h
winget install --id=Amazon.SAM-CLI -e -h
# Azure
winget install --id=Microsoft.AzureCLI -e -h
winget install --id=Microsoft.AzureFunctionsCoreTools -e -h
# GCP
winget install --id=Google.CloudSDK -e -h

TL;DR

Motivation

Prerequisites

Approach

Further Reading