Unpacking Software Livestream

Join our monthly Unpacking Software livestream to hear about the latest news, chat and opinion on packaging, software deployment and lifecycle management!

Learn More
Chocolatey Product Spotlight

Join the Chocolatey Team on our regular monthly stream where we put a spotlight on the most recent Chocolatey product releases. You'll have a chance to have your questions answered in a live Ask Me Anything format.

Learn More
Chocolatey Coding Livestream

Join us for the Chocolatey Coding Livestream, where members of our team dive into the heart of open source development by coding live on various Chocolatey projects. Tune in to witness real-time coding, ask questions, and gain insights into the world of package management. Don't miss this opportunity to engage with our team and contribute to the future of Chocolatey!

Learn More
Calling All Chocolatiers! Whipping Up Windows Automation with Chocolatey Central Management

Webinar from
Wednesday, 17 January 2024

We are delighted to announce the release of Chocolatey Central Management v0.12.0, featuring seamless Deployment Plan creation, time-saving duplications, insightful Group Details, an upgraded Dashboard, bug fixes, user interface polishing, and refined documentation. As an added bonus we'll have members of our Solutions Engineering team on-hand to dive into some interesting ways you can leverage the new features available!

Watch On-Demand
Chocolatey Community Coffee Break

Join the Chocolatey Team as we discuss all things Community, what we do, how you can get involved and answer your Chocolatey questions.

Watch The Replays
Chocolatey and Intune Overview

Webinar Replay from
Wednesday, 30 March 2022

At Chocolatey Software we strive for simple, and teaching others. Let us teach you just how simple it could be to keep your 3rd party applications updated across your devices, all with Intune!

Watch On-Demand
Chocolatey For Business. In Azure. In One Click.

Livestream from
Thursday, 9 June 2022

Join James and Josh to show you how you can get the Chocolatey For Business recommended infrastructure and workflow, created, in Azure, in around 20 minutes.

Watch On-Demand
The Future of Chocolatey CLI

Livestream from
Thursday, 04 August 2022

Join Paul and Gary to hear more about the plans for the Chocolatey CLI in the not so distant future. We'll talk about some cool new features, long term asks from Customers and Community and how you can get involved!

Watch On-Demand
Hacktoberfest Tuesdays 2022

Livestreams from
October 2022

For Hacktoberfest, Chocolatey ran a livestream every Tuesday! Re-watch Cory, James, Gary, and Rain as they share knowledge on how to contribute to open-source projects such as Chocolatey CLI.

Watch On-Demand

Chocolatey Packages

What is a Chocolatey Package?

Chocolatey packages are known as nupkg files, which is a compiled NuSpec or a fancy zip file that knows about package metadata (including dependencies and versioning). These packages are enhanced NuGet packages; they have additional metadata that is specific to Chocolatey. Chocolatey is also compatible with vanilla NuGet packages. A Chocolatey package can contain embedded software and/or automation scripts.

Chocolatey packages are not just something fancy on top of MSI/EXE installers. Chocolatey supports that avenue and, with the addition of unzipping archives, it is the most widely used aspect of Chocolatey especially in regards to the packages on the Chocolatey Community Repository (CCR). Chocolatey’s core function is package management and it works best when those packages contain all the software it needs, instead of reaching out to external resources or the internet for the software those packages represent. The CCR is a single representation of how packages can be built driven by distribution rights that govern when packages can redistribute software. Distribution rights do not govern private or internal packages, so packages internal to organizations can accomplish more. For example, you can create software-embedded packages where the executables are automatically added to the path (a process called shimming). You can create PowerShell automation scripts that do almost anything you want, including running native installers that may be embedded or downloaded as part of the automation script (another aspect widely used by the community).

Packages with everything embedded are more deterministic and repeatable; aspects that are valued and in most cases required by businesses. This won’t be seen as often with community packages due to the aforementioned distribution rights.

The closer the underlying software a package represents is to the package itself (meaning the executables and files are included in the package), the more Chocolatey behaves like a package manager.

Test Your Skills!

IMPORTANT

You must be logged in to take this test. Don't have an account yet? Register Now

Log On