chocolatey

Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows designed to simplify the installation and management of software across one or many machines. It provides a command-line interface and automation capabilities for Windows environments. Built on the NuGet packaging ecosystem, Chocolatey uses packages that wrap software installers with scripts to perform silent installs and configurations. Packages are distributed through the Chocolatey Community Repository as well as private feeds.

Packages are delivered as NuGet-based .nupkg files. A typical package contains installation scripts (often chocolateyinstall.ps1) and metadata. The primary interface is the choco command-line tool (choco.exe). Common commands include install, upgrade, uninstall, list, search, and info. Chocolatey handles dependencies, supports version pinning, source selection, and checksums, and can run pre- and post-install scripts.

Chocolatey is widely used in IT operations, software provisioning, and automated build and deployment pipelines. It supports running with elevated privileges, silent installations, and integration with configuration-management practices. The core open-source distribution is available free as Chocolatey Community Edition, while Chocolatey Software offers commercial editions that add centralized management, auditing, licensing controls, and policy enforcement for larger deployments.

History and scope: Chocolatey originated in 2011 as an open-source project and has grown into a mature package-management ecosystem for Windows, with a large community-maintained package catalog. It is one of several Windows package managers and is often compared with other tools such as Windows Package Manager (winget) and Scoop.