this is version 1.3 of the Microsoft package manager

Two years ago, Microsoft introduced the manager of your new Windows package management systemWindows Package Manager (more known as Wingetequivalent to Ubuntu’s Apt-get and other Debian distributions) and, less than a year later, it had already released the first stable version (open source as well).

“WinGet is a set of software tools that help us automate the process of downloading software on our computer. You specify which applications you want to install, and it does the work of finding the latest version available (or exactly the one you specified) and install it on your PC”.

Now, Microsoft has just announced that Winget 1.3 is now available, and it comes with a long list of new features. Characteristics that do nothing but bring Windows closer to an operating model that has been working very well on Linux for decades…

…and that make it easier for more and more software to join this unified package management system, instead of seeing each software developer use their own installer. This standard, as it can be managed from the command line, It will allow to facilitate the automation of the installation and update of the software in large organizations.

Portable applications, but with all the good things about installable ones

As Microsoft’s Demitrius Nelon explains:

“We wanted to make sure you could manage these portable packages, so when you install them on your machine the relevant entries will be added to the Windows Applications menu. This allows you to access them like any installed application, and even delete them from the system easily without having to type ‘winget uninstall Microsoft.NuGet‘”.

Microsoft claims that it will soon start accept into your app repository the first portable app packages submitted by the developers. The process should be underway in about a week, when the company finishes rolling out the update to all users through the Microsoft Store.

And that’s not all

But those are not the only changes. There are others that will be very useful for developers (“the development team has added several improvements to the manifest to improve the package installation experience”) and others that will be for end users (“The progress bar has been improved to show installation progress in more detail“).

Aside from that, the new arguments and subcommands available for WinGet are the following:

• If what you are looking for is access all available information about a given packagethe command winget show [nombre del paquete]’ It will be of great use to you.
• If, on the other hand, what you want is to be able to have all the information available about the installation process of a package ?for example, to know exactly which step fails? Add “verbose-logs” any call to the ‘winget’ command will send more detailed information to your system logs.
• The command ‘winget ?info’ now displays information regarding the architecture of the CPU, and the version of the operating system and the package manager itself of Windows. That will make it easier to figure out why the package you’ve successfully installed on one computer seems mysteriously unavailable on another.