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What is Chocolatey? Windows Package Management – Puppet

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Read this blog to learn more about Chocolatey and how it’s used to simplify and speed up software installation on Windows.

Table of ContentsWhat

is Chocolatey?

  • Why do people use

    • Chocolatey? + Benefits of Chocolatey

  • Chocolatey Use Cases How

    • Chocolatey

  • integrations improve package managementWhat

    • is Chocolatey

  • ?

Chocolatey

is an open source package manager for Windows. It builds on existing technologies such as PowerShell and NuGet. Chocolatey operates through the command line interface (CLI), making it easy to automate software installation and management.

(A package manager, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a way to get software on your machine without much work on your part. It is the Windows equivalent of yum or apt-get.)

If you’re in IT, you probably deploy a lot of software on many machines that use packages. That can be particularly tricky, considering all the installers, executables, and files to corral. Chocolatey automates the installation, update and management of many packages at once. That allows you to get more work done faster.

I created Chocolatey in 2011. Now, packages available on Chocolatey.org have been downloaded millions of times, thanks to support from Microsoft and the Chocolatey community.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Chocolatey’s package management gets its name from the NuGet infrastructure it’s built on, because “everyone loves chocolate nougat.” Do you understand?

What is Chocolatey used for?

Chocolatey is most commonly used to install software and software updates on many machines at once. Like many DevOps tools, Chocolatey is used to automate repetitive tasks. Specifically, Chocolatey can deploy software packages, applications, zips, binaries, scripts, and installers to Windows machines.

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For example, suppose you need to install Git. You could do this manually, which would require learning where to download from, deciding what you need, downloading, unlocking, and the next one. Or, you can run a command on Chocolatey and go get coffee while it does all the work for you. Chocolatey makes all the decisions: you get the dependent applications and even configure your machine correctly.

Why do people use Chocolatey? + Benefits

of Chocolatey Chocolatey automates package management

, and software developers use Chocolatey because it simplifies package management. Chocolatey takes all of those and creates a simple interface to install and manage them all with a single command.

By automating package management, Chocolatey makes it easy to manage complex Windows environments. Overall, Chocolatey is known for reducing effort, speeding up software deployment, and offering detailed reporting information, which can be a lifesaver.

Chocolatey

Use Cases

On Windows, Chocolatey is an automation tool that compiles installers, compressed files, executables, and scripts into packages to manage software. Chocolatey is preferred by some for installing Windows packages for its ease of use and availability of Chocolatey packages.

But the real power of Chocolatey isn’t in the

single installation of a package; it’s in Chocolatey’s ability to keep all of its software up to date

.

Chocolatey can be used to help standardize and scale infrastructure management on Windows. Chocolatey packages can provide a foundation for deploying Windows software on endpoints, cloud instances (AWS, Azure, and GCP), and even containers. Chocolatey even integrates with configuration management solutions like Puppet and other tools for other use cases (like source control, repositories, CI servers, and more).

Suppose you need to update multiple applications to get security updates. Instead of manually updating every piece of software on your system, you can run a single command with Chocolatey (choco upgrade all -y) and focus on more important things.

How Chocolatey integrations improve package management Chocolatey

integrates with infrastructure automation tools, including Puppet. Controlling and configuring Chocolatey from the Puppet interface allows you to automate and scale up your package management based on your infrastructure needs.

That way, you can use Chocolatey to install software, deploy updates, and manage deployment to more machines with the push of a button.

Start automating with Puppet, integrate with Chocolatey, and discover the benefits of zero-touch package management and IT deployment.

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This post was originally published on April 10, 2015 and has since been updated for accuracy and relevance

.

Learn more

Get

  • the latest documents on Chocolatey.org.
  • Watch my PuppetConf 2014 talk: Connecting Chocolatey to its puppet infrastructure
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