6 Useful Chocolatey Command for Windows Package Management With Examples

In the our previous posts, we have discussed What, Why & How (installation) of Chocolatey, a windows package manger. In this article, we would see Chocolatey in action i.e. different Chocolatey commands with examples.

Although we would discuss the basic Chocolatey commands here, one can easily find more details regarding Chocolatey commands, How To Pass Options / Switches and Default Options and Switches by simply hitting the choco -? command in their command prompt.

Chocolatey Commands

choco list                        // lists remote or local packages
choco search [package_name]      //searches remote or local packages
choco info [package_name]        // retrieves package information 
choco install [package_name]     // installs packages from various sources
choco uninstall [package_name]   // uninstalls a package
choco upgrade [package_name]     // upgrades packages from various sources
choco outdated                  //retrieves packages that are outdated

Chocolatey: A delightful Windows package manager

If you have worked with Linux based systems then you already know how easily one can install, uninstall, search and update the software packages using package manager utility like apt-get, dpkg, rpm, yum, etc. But can you vouch the same thing for Windows system? Does Windows system provides any similar utility for managing the software application. The answer would be NO. 

Question to the Windows user: Do you really like the traditional way (easy but time & effort taking) of installing, uninstalling, searching and upgrading the software application that generally involves below steps:

• Search the desired version of software from internet 
• Download the respective exe or MSI file (wait until it gets downloaded)
• Install it manually i.e. click, click, click our way through the installation. If we are upgrading /downgrading the software version then uninstall the earlier version
• Now follow the same process for EVERY piece of software that we want in our system.

In this article, we would discuss the solution of this problem. Now we have Chocolatey at our disposal that takes away all the pain of manually installing/uninstalling/searching/listing and upgrading the software packages in the Windows systems.