---
title: "[Cool Tool] Chocolatey for windows is what you will not live without in two years"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2012/6/18/cool-tool-chocolatey-for-windows-is-what-you-will-not-live-w.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2012/6/18/cool-tool-chocolatey-for-windows-is-what-you-will-not-live-w.html"
published: "2012-06-18T18:36:11"
updated: "2012-06-18T18:36:11"
tags: ["Cool Tools"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "OK, the name isn’t amazing, but having lived in linux land for a while now, and on mac too, the one thing I miss in windows is a no-hassle, dialog-free installation experience, that I can just do using a command line.…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# \[Cool Tool\] Chocolatey for windows is what you will not live without in two years

By Roy Osherove June 18, 2012 In [Cool Tools](https://osherove.com/blog/category/cool-tools)

**Historical article** · Originally published June 18, 2012; technical details may be outdated.

OK, the name isn’t amazing, but having lived in linux land for a while now, and on mac too, the one thing I miss in windows is a no-hassle, dialog-free installation experience, that I can just do using a command line.

[Chocolatey is as close as it gets](http://chocolatey.org/), and it makes for a very good experience.

Just go to [http://chocolatey.org/](http://chocolatey.org/) and check out the simple instructions.

after a simple install you should be able to install a bunch of apps very easily without having to :

- go to a site
- download an installer
- unzip maybe
- run installer
- press all the dialogs

you would just do a simple command line “c:\\cinst \[\[application name\]\]”

and that’s it. [here’s the list of things](http://chocolatey.org/packages) you can install now, and you can quite easily create more.

I think it should be awesome to bae able to install typemock isolator that way (hint!) but I don’t work there anymore, so I can’t make it happen. If I did, I would.

I hope that people will start using this for automated software deployments too. 

## More in Cool Tools

[All posts in Cool Tools](https://osherove.com/blog/category/cool-tools)

- Feb 22, 2013

    ### [Six Tools for managing multiple remote desktop sessions on windows and mac](https://osherove.com/blog/2013/2/22/tools-for-managing-multiple-remote-desktop-sessions-on-windo.html)

- Jun 26, 2012

    ### [FakeItEasy or NSubstitute? Which should I use for samples in art of unit testing 2nd edition?](https://osherove.com/blog/2012/6/26/fakeiteasy-or-nsubstitute-which-should-i-use-for-samples-in.html)

- Dec 14, 2011

    ### [\[Cool Tool\] Checking Out VsVim](https://osherove.com/blog/2011/12/14/cool-tool-checking-out-vsvim.html)

- Aug 2, 2010

    ### [Case Study: SmartInspect in the real world](https://osherove.com/blog/2010/8/2/case-study-smartinspect-in-the-real-world.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

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### Contact

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### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/