Winget packages

[erik-brangs]

It would be great if there were packages for Windows Package Manager. Would you be willing to provide such packages?

Alternatively, I could file a package request at https://github.com/microsoft/winget-pkgs .

[davidbannon]

Interesting Erik, I don't know anything about it so will have to have a read when time permits. Thanks for the pointer.

As a matter of interest, do you find the way -ng is packaged now unsatisfactory ? (apart from looking pretty much the same as I remember last time I used Windows full time, at least 20 years ago !). Or is it a matter of distribution ?

Davo

[erik-brangs]

The main advantage of Windows Package Manager for me is that I can more easily update packages, i.e. I don't have to update every software separately.

If I understood it correctly, Windows Package Manager supports some common Windows installation formats out of the box. The current version of Windows Package Manager also recognizes software that was installed without it, provided someone created a package for it. On my system, winget upgrade showed more than a dozen applications that I previously installed without it.

[davidbannon]

Erik, I have not got any further with Winget but during my last release, people from Scoop contacted me asking if they could package tomboy-ng for their system. Obviously, I said yes very quickly.

Now, I have just released tomboy-ng v0.40 and within an hour the scoop one is updated ! Might be a solution ? I am not a Windows user so I'd like to hear your thoughts before I publicly promote Scoop to my users. Important IMHO, more than half my users are Windows users ...

https://github.com/ScoopInstaller/Scoop

https://scoop.sh/#/apps?q=tomboy-ng

Davo

[erik-brangs]

I can't say much about advantages or disadvantages of different installation methods on Windows.

I use Winget because it supports management of software that was installed without it (e.g. by directly executing a .msi file). Winget is very convenient for me because lots of software is available. If I had to choose between Scoop and Winget, I'd still use Winget. Winget's disadvantages (e.g. UAC prompts or popups) are less important to me than being able to manage almost all of the software centrally.

Many software packages for Windows actually do have .msi installers which generally work well with Winget. Software which is also aimed at business or large organisations (e.g. LibreOffice, 7-Zip) has .msi installers because businesses prefer .msi. If a software for Windows does not have .msi installers, it often has some other kind of installer. Winget supports the common installers produced by open source installer software for Windows (e.g. Nullsoft Scriptable Install System).

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