Chocolatey is a Machine Package Manager, somewhat like apt-get, built with Windows in mind. It lets us install software onto our machine, supports updates and dependencies, much like NuGet or npm do. MyGet has always supported feeds containing Chocolatey packages, making it easy to distribute software packages across teams or with customers. In this post, we’ll show you a trick on how to build Chocolatey packages using MyGet build services. It’s the least we can do as a Belgian company – our country is known for chocolates after all…

MyGet Build Services has a convention-type build approach that will create NuGet, npm and VSIX packages whenever required files or project types are available. By adding a build.cmd or build.ps1 file, this convention can be overridden – just the thing we want to do to create Chocolatey packages.

Using a little bit of PowerShell, we can call into Chocolatey’s choco.exe which handles packaging and verification. The following can be copy/pasted in a build.ps1 file in the root of a GitHub, BitBucket or VSTS repository:

Write-Host "Building Chocolatey packages..."

$nuspecs = Get-ChildItem -Path $PSScriptRoot -Filter *.nuspec -Recurse

foreach ($nuspec in $nuspecs) {
    choco pack $nuspec.FullName
}

$artifactsFolder = "./artifacts"

Remove-Item -Path $artifactsFolder -Force -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
New-Item $artifactsFolder -Force -Type Directory | Out-Null
Move-Item *.nupkg $artifactsFolder

Write-Host "Finished building Chocolatey packages."

Once a build is triggered on MyGet, this script will execute and create (and upload) Chocolatey packages to our MyGet feed, which we can then install on our system.

Happy packaging!