/scoop

A command-line installer for Windows.

Primary LanguagePowerShellThe UnlicenseUnlicense

Scoop Build status

Scoop is a command-line installer for Windows.

Requirements:

  • PowerShell 3
  • PowerShell must be enabled for your user account e.g. set-executionpolicy unrestricted -s cu

To install:

iex (new-object net.webclient).downloadstring('https://get.scoop.sh')

Once installed, run scoop help for instructions.

What does Scoop do?

Scoop installs programs from the command line with a minimal amount of friction. It tries to eliminate things like:

  • Permission popup windows
  • GUI wizard-style installers
  • Path pollution from installing lots of programs
  • Unexpected side-effects from installing and uninstalling programs
  • The need to find and install dependencies
  • The need to perform extra setup steps to get a working program

Scoop is very scriptable, so you can run repeatable setups to get your environment just the way you like, e.g.:

scoop install sudo
sudo scoop install 7zip git openssh --global
scoop install curl grep sed less tail touch
scoop install python ruby go perl

If you've built software that you'd like others to use, Scoop is an alternative to building an installer (e.g. MSI or InnoSetup)—you just need to zip your program and provide a JSON manifest that describes how to install it.

Documentation

Inspiration

What sort of apps can Scoop install?

The apps that install best with Scoop are commonly called "portable" apps: i.e. compressed program files that run stand-alone when extracted and don't have side-effects like changing the registry or putting files outside the program directory.

Since installers are common, Scoop supports them too (and their uninstallers).

Scoop is also great at handling single-file programs and Powershell scripts. These don't even need to be compressed. See the runat package for an example: it's really just a GitHub gist.