Command line in Windows.

You love it when there are Powershell, Cmder and friends. And, you hate it when you cannot install simple programs quickly.

Well, hate may be a strong word - but you get the gist.

I have tried chocolatey and have a like-dislike relationship with that program. I have also experimented with VMs and anything that exposes more of the command line. None of the programs stuck in my day-to-day flow. For a few projects, I dedicatedly use WSL - but could not quite switch over everywhere.

In the meantime, I now use Scoop. Scoop is different.

  • Install Scoop
  • Install developer apps/configurations (e.g. curl)
  • Use apps

I faced installation issues to begin with - but none that could stand the test of a good Google search.

Here’s what you do -

  1. Open Powershell in Windows 10. Execute the following command to bypass the execution policy for the session.

    Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process

  2. Set directory for Scoop and install it.

   $env:SCOOP='e:\scoop'
       [environment]::setEnvironmentVariable('SCOOP',$env:SCOOP,'User')
   iex (new-object net.webclient).downloadstring('https://get.scoop.sh')
  1. Install apps using scoop install curl or install apps globally. You can set directory for global apps using Powershell admin
   $env:SCOOP_GLOBAL='c:\apps'
       [environment]::setEnvironmentVariable('SCOOP_GLOBAL',$env:SCOOP_GLOBAL,'Machine')
   scoop install -g curl

Now, just hit commands in Powershell to install local/global apps.