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Free Software Building and Packaging for Windows

win-builds.org

11–15 of 15 posts

Re: Free Software Building and Packaging for Windows

#11
post #5

Am I wrong in thinking that basically, the best package manager available for Windows is Steam?

Chocolatey is pretty good

OneGet is supposedly also an option, last I heard it is essentially acting as a wrapper for Chocolatey and shipped in the W10 RTM.

Since it is supported by MS that one might win out over all of the others eventually.

See also the comments made here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topihttps://groups.google....

I'm still on W8 machine here so I have not had the chance to test whether it is buggy or not...

Re: Free Software Building and Packaging for Windows

#12
post #5

Am I wrong in thinking that basically, the best package manager available for Windows is Steam?

Chocolatey is pretty good

chocolatey seems fine if you are a package consumer, and never want to create/maintain your own packages.

if you are in a business/organisation that also wants to use the same thing to manage your own in-house package dependencies -- it doesn't seem like such an appropriate solution.

Re: Free Software Building and Packaging for Windows

#13
post #9
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam is proprietary, closed-source, has a single for-profit vendor, uses closed communication protocols (e.g. for Friends) preventing an open reimplementation, and there's no automated way of submitting new packages. Not to mention the scandals where it read through your browser history. The download UI is nice, it does use plain http/s for package delivery, and it has a large install base. But i definitely do not t…

Faults aside, I think Steam's model is worth considering in terms of what features a package manager might need to succeed on Windows. Everything else posted here seems like it wants to replicate the Linux experience in Windows, and I suspect that would have limited appeal.

In no way is steam a package manager, it has no concept of dependency trees.

Re: Free Software Building and Packaging for Windows

#14
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chocolatey is pretty good

chocolatey seems fine if you are a package consumer, and never want to create/maintain your own packages. if you are in a business/organisation that also wants to use the same thing to manage your own in-house package dependencies -- it doesn't seem like such an appropriate solution.

Take a look at spoon.net, you can script creating / deploying images and it works pretty well.

Re: Free Software Building and Packaging for Windows

#15
post #6
post #5

Am I wrong in thinking that basically, the best package manager available for Windows is Steam?

Steam is proprietary, closed-source, has a single for-profit vendor, uses closed communication protocols (e.g. for Friends) preventing an open reimplementation, and there's no automated way of submitting new packages. Not to mention the scandals where it read through your browser history. The download UI is nice, it does use plain http/s for package delivery, and it has a large install base. But i definitely do not t…

https://github.com/dajoh/OpenSteamClient
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