Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows. It's a bit slow, but it's really handy if you want to keep your program installations and upgrades organised. I imagine it's especially great if you've a new computer and want to install a whole bunch of favourite programs.

You install stuff from a command prompt, with commands like choco install/search/upgrade all, etc (And there are shorter versions too, eg: cinst).

You can also give it a file which lists everything you want to install, autoconfirm prompts, and let it do it's thing;

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<packages>
	<package id="firefox" />
	<package id="foobar2000" />
	<package id="notepadplusplus" />
	<package id="steam" />
</packages>

• In Windows PowerShell, set-executionpolicy [unrestricted|restricted]

• search
• install / cinst
• uninstall / cuninst
• upgrade all / cup all
• list -localonly

I would keep this batch file on my desktop so I can run an update whenever:

PowerShell -NoProfile -NoExit -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "& {Start-Process PowerShell.exe 'choco upgrade all' -Verb RunAs}"
PAUSE

You could also just run a powershell script directly, but I keep my executionpolicy restricted setting on, so scripts can't get through. Maybe that's paranaoid…

• chocolatey
• chocolatey.org
  • chocolatey.org/packages