Windows Package Manager


The Windows Package Manager is a free and open-source package manager designed for Microsoft Windows 10. It consists of a command-line utility and a set of services for installing applications. ISVs 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 different alternative options and talked with various well-known package manager teams including Chocolatey, Scoop, Ninite and others such as AppGet, Npackd and the PowerShell based OneGet package manager-manager.
After the release of winget, Keivan Beigi, the developer of AppGet, claimed that Microsoft interviewed him in December 2019 under the pretense of acquiring AppGet and hiring Beigi. 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.

Overview

The winget tool supports installers based on EXE, MSIX, and MSI. The public Windows Package Manager Community repository hosts manifest files for supported applications in YAML format.
To reduce the likelihood of malicious software making its way into the repository and onto the target machine, Windows Package Manager uses Microsoft SmartScreen, static analysis, SHA256 hash validation and other processes.
The winget client source code and the community manifest repository are licensed under MIT License and hosted on GitHub.

Example

The following example searches for and installs Visual Studio Code, an open source code editor from Microsoft.

PS C:\Users\Wikipedia> winget install vscode