I prefer scoop instead of chocolatey. Also winget just doesn't feel like a finished product.
Ask HN: Windows Dev Setup?
11–20 of 34 posts
Re: Ask HN: Windows Dev Setup?
#12Powershell, Windows Terminal and oh-my-posh get you pretty close to zsh on Linux. I'll comment back with a few more tweaks I had to make to powershell to get closest to the Linux experience. But my biggest gripe is not having tmux. There are some window/tab/pane management shortcuts in Windows Terminal but they're not as good as tmux (yet).
Here's my $PROFILE: Import-Module PSReadLine Set-PSReadLineOption -EditMode Emacs Set-PSReadLineOption -HistorySearchCursorMovesToEnd Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Key UpArrow -Function HistorySearchBackward Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Key DownArrow -Function HistorySearchForward Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Key Tab -Function Complete Import-Module posh-git Import-Module oh-my-posh Set-PoshPrompt -Theme material function e {…
You can also enable predictive intellisense with PSReadLine 2.1+
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/powershell/announcing-psreadl...
Re: Ask HN: Windows Dev Setup?
#13I prefer scoop instead of chocolatey. Also winget just doesn't feel like a finished product. https://scoop.sh/
Preference has nothing to do with it. We are not in the fashion store.
Scoop is way inferior by number of packages and stability. Mainstream chocolatey packages are embedded which means you don't need network to install them so you can cache them (artifactory, nexus...).
Even for networked packages Chocolatey has its own CDN that keeps them even when vendor removes it (its commercial though).
With scoop, as with brew and winget typically only latest packages work, packages are flaky, and 404 will be your constant friend. Since those package managers do not allow adding binary files they are for causal use, not professional.
I would like to use scoop, but as long as it functions like that, you can't rely on any package working in near future.
Re: Ask HN: Windows Dev Setup?
#14Its better then ever. 1. Use Chocolatey (winget is still new). You can setup everything via it, and I mean everything - node, postgre, docker, vscode, all browsers, selenium and drivers etc. 2. Learn Powershell, but learn it really good. Adopt PowerShell build system Invoke-Build 3. Install better terminal - ConEmu or Windows terminal 4. Enrich Windows using FOSS and cross platform tools: choco install copyq, flamesh…
Addendum to 2: use PowerShell 7, a newer major version than the one probably coming as default, and based on the modern Core lineage. You get niceties and the sanity you'd expect such as UTF-8 when writing to files with the > operator.
Indeed: cinst pwsh
Also set it as default in terminal/conemu.
Re: Ask HN: Windows Dev Setup?
#15Its better then ever. 1. Use Chocolatey (winget is still new). You can setup everything via it, and I mean everything - node, postgre, docker, vscode, all browsers, selenium and drivers etc. 2. Learn Powershell, but learn it really good. Adopt PowerShell build system Invoke-Build 3. Install better terminal - ConEmu or Windows terminal 4. Enrich Windows using FOSS and cross platform tools: choco install copyq, flamesh…
BTW, here is my profile.d for PowerShell:
Re: Ask HN: Windows Dev Setup?
#16I prefer scoop instead of chocolatey. Also winget just doesn't feel like a finished product. https://scoop.sh/
Preference has nothing to do with it. We are not in the fashion store. Scoop is way inferior by number of packages and stability. Mainstream chocolatey packages are embedded which means you don't need network to install them so you can cache them (artifactory, nexus...). Even for networked packages Chocolatey has its own CDN that keeps them even when vendor removes it (its commercial though). With scoop, as with brew…
I would not use scoop for any sort of build environment.
I have used Chocolatey in the past. I would often run into problems where the commands would leave an application in an inconsistent state - could no longer upgrade, uninstall, or install without some manual intervention. I also ended up having to manually install packages and frameworks because the chocolatey version was way behind the latest version. Basically I always felt like I was fighting against chocolatey rather than it being a tool of convenience.
Maybe it has gotten better in the past few years, but I have completely soured on it by those experiences.
Re: Ask HN: Windows Dev Setup?
#17You can avoid the awfulness of chocolatey by sticking with WSL2. Install that, docker desktop, windows terminal and vscode, voila you are back in linux land and can completely avoid powershell and windows broken file names.
Re: Ask HN: Windows Dev Setup?
#18Visual Studio Professional, Eclipse/Netbeans, VS Code. latest PowerShell, Windows Terminal, WinMerge, Notepad++, ToirtoiseGit/SVN, Paint.NET. Office, FF, Chrome, EdgeChrome. Everything else is project specific.
I'd say much of that is likewise project specific. .NET teams do tend to solidify on a set of tools like you listed, but such lists are shared tooling agreed upon by the team, not a requirements list for everyone who will work on a Windows box.
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Re: Ask HN: Windows Dev Setup?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Preference has nothing to do with it. We are not in the fashion store. Scoop is way inferior by number of packages and stability. Mainstream chocolatey packages are embedded which means you don't need network to install them so you can cache them (artifactory, nexus...). Even for networked packages Chocolatey has its own CDN that keeps them even when vendor removes it (its commercial though). With scoop, as with brew…
I would not use scoop for any sort of build environment. I have used Chocolatey in the past. I would often run into problems where the commands would leave an application in an inconsistent state - could no longer upgrade, uninstall, or install without some manual intervention. I also ended up having to manually install packages and frameworks because the chocolatey version was way behind the latest version. Basicall…
Yeah, it got a lot better in the past few years. It was disaster 5+ years ago, as NO package was embedded and there were number of badly designed components such as package parameter parsing. Even now its far from perfect but its better then anything else on Windows.
I don't work for Chocolatey but I am active as community maintainer. I also created AU - framework for automatic updates - which is used on largest community repository. You can see its multiple-per-day output here:
https://gist.github.com/choco-bot/a14b1e5bfaf70839b338eb1ab7...
All the packages marked with download icon are embedded, they contain the software and will work forever. AU also has plugin that publishes them on Github releases also, so even if Chocolatey goes down or not exists any more you will be still able to use them.
Quality of packages there is great, and there are more and more package maintainers that use the guidelines provided.
On the negative side, Chocolatey team behaves toward community repository like it is freak accident of nature rather then major and most important component of the product.
Re: Ask HN: Windows Dev Setup?
#20You can avoid the awfulness of chocolatey by sticking with WSL2. Install that, docker desktop, windows terminal and vscode, voila you are back in linux land and can completely avoid powershell and windows broken file names.
If you avoid PowerShell, go back to where you came from :)
Avoid bad advices.