What's more, you don't need to be in an elevated admin shell to install packages. One of the strongest advantages of winget is that it's built right into all builds of Windows 11 and most newer builds of Windows 10.

While winget is Microsoft's official solution, Chocolatey works on a wider range of systems (back to Windows 7) and more packages.

winget - Microsoft's official CLI package manager as-of 2020īoth of them are incredibly polished and ready-to-use today.

Chocolatey - a third party package manager that's been around since 2011.

When it comes to CLI package management on Windows, you have two main choices: None of the paid software we mention here has been included as part of a sponsorship or financial deal in any way, I just like them and use them myself. Moreover, much of what we'll be taking a look at today is either free, open-source, or both! There will be a few mentions of paid software as alternatives to the free options, but I've personally used every piece of commercial software in this article. Between official tooling such as WSL2 right around the corner to third-party offerings becoming more-and-more mature, there's never been a better time to be a developer on the Windows platform. What many don't know is that Windows has gained many of these options over the years. Some of the top contenders I've heard are: Ask any developer running a Linux or MacOS machine, and they'll be able to tell you what makes their systems such a strong contender for software development.

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