Warning
This is deprecated for now, I prefer making PowerShell libraries that can do similar tasks to the-installer, see TweakList.
The Installer - like Ninite but on crack
- Tired of installing each of your programs each time you reinstall Windows?
- Do you want to separate your OS from your program data so you can easily reinstall/break your Windows without wasting time? (separate portable partition)
- Are you tired of programs being dispersed between AppData Roaming & Local, Program Files, Program Files (x86) and ProgramData?
- Do you want to install (most) of the programs you need in the snap of a finger?
The Installer is a user friendly frontend of Scoop, a package manager that fits in a single folder (per default in %userprofile%\scoop
)
Open PowerShell and paste in the following codeblock:
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = 'Tls12' # Forces TLS 1.2
Invoke-RestMethod https://git.io/J9GI7 | Invoke-Expression # Parses then executes the script
If you don't have Scoop installed, it'll ask you on what drive to install it, it's recommended to separate your OS' drive (typically C:, where Windows is installed) with all of your programs' data.
After setting up Scoop all you've got to do left is selected the programs you want to:
- use your UP and DOWN arrow to navigate
- SPACE to tick and untick
- ENTER to go to the next page
Not all apps are in one single bucket, a parser will retrieve all the buckets required and will install them
After that all apps will be installed
Now that your apps are installed you can check for updates on all of them by opening the terminal and sending scoop.cmd update
, scoop.cmd status
to get the list of all apps available for update, then you can update each of them scoop.cmd update app1 app2 app3..
or update everything: scoop.cmd update *
⚠ Note an app cannot be updated if any of it's processes are running
Scoop is a package manager for Windows like Chocolatey, or like Ubuntu's apt-get, each program is stored in a bucket as a manifest. It is community ran and everyone can make their own scoop bucket.
When you open the folder where Scoop is installed, you'll find the following folders:
- apps: where the actual program data is kept
- buckets: where the buckets (which are github repositories) are storred
- cache: where the installer files get downloaded
- persist: where user data for apps is kept, but persists when updating them (uses symbolic links)
- shims: this is folder is added to path and contains shortcuts to execute all programs who need their CLI tools added to path
Once you've understood how Scoop works, you never go back installing programs like before. Scoop's community consistantly maintains and adds new manifests. If you take the time to understand how app manifests work, you too can make your own manifests/bucket / contribute to other buckets
If you're worrying about people installing programs for you, you can easily check what website you're downloading from (which are confirmed with a SHA256 checksum) by checking scoop\buckets\acoolbucket\cuteprogram.json
This is what Scoop was originally made for, you can simply give it a zip to extract, a binary to shim and a folder to persist for it to be a totally functional program which that can receive updates.