Installing GHI SDK's and tools via Chocolatey

I really like Chocolatey. It makes it so simple to create my own scripts that I can use to simply update all the apps I use on my computers. I also regularly go to Chocolatey Software | Packages just to see if there is something interesting I did not know about.

Sadly GHI products are one of those rare exceptions which is not supported in Chocolatey. Personally I think its a great free way to get more exposure for companies like GHI. I can strongly recommend GHI look into this and start making it possibly to update to the latest SDK’s etc via Chocolatey.

I personally never heard of this website. What is special about it?

It is basically just a script like installer. Most of the bigger software companies (including Microsoft, Arduino etc) makes install packages available for Chocolatey. This means on your own computer you can run a single script to update all the programs that you regularly use. Or if you set up a new computer it is very quick to get all your favourite programs installed. At my workplace we use it to set up development environments for new starters

It is really simple to use. For example to install Visual Studio 12 you just have to type the following in powershell:


cinst VisualStudio2012WDX 

To be clear, it’s a system which uses NuGet to install software. Microsoft didn’t make the packages available, someone wrote NuGet packages that download and install Microsoft software (for example).

Those means someone could do the same for our sdk if they find that beneficial?

I assume so, yes. I don’t know if there’s anything about GHI’s SDK specifically which would make it harder than normal to write a NuGet script to install. Maybe because of the prompts in the installer?