“Windows Package Manager (winget) 1.3” compatible with outgoing portable applications – Window Forest

On August 3rd (Japan time), Microsoft released the “Windows Package Manager 1.3” CUI management tool application package. Various optimizations, including several data optimizations to improve the package installation experience.

Windows Package Manager (winget) is a package management system that can install, update, and uninstall applications from the command line. The application can be installed simply by entering the following command in “Windows Terminal” etc. which starts with administrator privileges. It can be said that it is compatible with “apt-get” and “DNF” in Linux and “Homebrew” in Mac.

# 「Visual Studio Code」をインストール
winget install vscode

“Winget” is available for “Windows 10 version 1809 or later” and “Windows 11”. If you update the “App Installer” in the “Store” application, this will be the latest version. You can also download it for free from the GitHub project page.

If you update the “App Installer” in the “Store” application, this will be the latest version

Improved installation experience

This version has an improved manifest. For example, if the package contains relevant documentation, the “winget show .” command can Now check the documentation and related URLs.

Also, most command line applications require environment variables to be reloaded after installing a package, but you can now view the installation note after installation. If you don’t want that, you can add the “suppressInstallNotes” option to your config file (see below). If you add “-display-notes” or “-support-notes” when entering the command, you can view the installation notes regardless of the description in the configuration file.

Improved installation experience, including the ability to view installation notes

It also supports custom responses provided by many executable (EXE) installers. If the installation fails, the URL now appears in addition to the standard error message. This is useful when checking why the installation failed.

Optimize and expand settings

In “winget” you can change the setting using “winget settings”. When you run the command, the application associated with the JSON file will open, but we recommend “Visual Studio Code”, which reads the JSON schema and completes the input. Even if you don’t know all the “winget” settings, you can customize the settings simply by selecting an option from the drop-down menu.

View configuration file with “suite settings”

Completing the entry works with “Visual Studio Code”

“winget 1.3” also expands the settings, and in addition to the above “suppressInstallNotes”, there are four options for adjusting the log level.

Enhanced functions

‘winget –info’ is useful for getting information about your system or ‘winget’, but in the latest version you can now use this command to find out your system architecture (x64, x86, arm64, etc.).

Check your system architecture (x64, x86, arm64, etc) using “winget –info”

Also, the progress bar has been improved by forum contributions and contains minute blocks. In other words, it will run much smoother than before. ‘winget’ can customize the style of the progress bar, but this applies to all styles.

In addition, support for packages with different display versions and internal versions (eg “Microsoft .NET SDK”) has been improved, and with respect to the display version for users, the version comparison is made correctly with the internal version. It can be processed.

Mobile app support

In this way, “winget 1.3” has many changes, but the most notable is the support for “portable applications” packages that do not have an installer. Currently, “Microsoft.NuGet” is registered in the repository as this kind of package, and it is said that it can be installed and uninstalled from “winget”. The added package is also correctly registered in the “Applications and Features” section of the Windows Settings application.

The added portable package is also correctly registered in the “Applications and Features” section of the Windows “Settings” application.

The company plans to accept Manifest requests for portable packages when “winget 1.3” is widely deployed. Some users prefer portable applications because they do not pollute the registry, but it has the disadvantage of being troublesome to manage. Support for the ‘winget’ portable package may improve this, and I’d like to keep an eye on future developments.