InstChoco

Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows that effortlessly installs software using PowerShell and without requiring your intervention in mid-installation. It's clearly a system that tries to mimic the way programs are installed and kept updated in Linux, eliminating the graphical UI and unnecessary user action.

InstChoco is a tiny batch file made by a third-party developer that's not affiliated with Chocolatey, which makes the Chocolatey installation procedure fully automatic by including a standard list of commonly used packages.

The utility offers two installation modes: Chocolatey and essential features only ("InstaChocho -ynp" command), as well as Chocolatey, essential and up to four optional features ("InstChocho -y OptionalFeature1 Optional Feature2..").

Some optional Chocolatey features include "allowGlobalConfirmation", "allowEmptyChecksums", "failOnAutoUninstaller" and "useRememberedArgumentsForUpgrades". Also, if one or more "PACKAGES.CONFIG" files exist on your system, InstChocho will detect and use them in the setup operation.

Once one of the two commands is deployed, the tool downloads and installs the latest Chocolatey package from the official website but not before downloading a command-line edition of 7-Zip to be able to unzip the package. All log details are shown in the console.

As reminded by InstChocho, you might have to close and reopen the shell to be able to use Chocolatey. It can be called from any location via Command Prompt or PowerShell. To view a list of all functions, you can use "choco /?".

According to the developer, the tool can back up the Chocolatey list of features locally and to the cloud. Support is also available for persistent packages (from "PERSISTANTPACKAGES.CONFIG" files) and Windows Active Directory domains.

Taking everything into account, InstChocho provides a straightforward, no-hassle solution for installing the Chocolatey package manager from a Command Prompt or PowerShell window.