Chocolatey - Windows Package Manager that FreeCAD can be installed from

[Kunda1]

Just an FYI, I don't use windows and do not know how the user experience is to use this chocolatey, this package manager. Nevertheless, it seems like people download freecad through it.
Here is the page that represent the FreeCAD package https://chocolatey.org/packages/freecad

chocolatey-fc-download-stats.png (96.33 KiB) Viewed 979 times

chocolatey-fc-download-stats-extended.png (89.73 KiB) Viewed 979 times

Currently they only package stable. I've made a request to the maintainers to also package the 0.18_pre release

[sgrogan]

Currently they only package stable. I've made a request to the maintainers to also package the 0.18_pre release

Good to see the downloads.
I tested this some time ago. It seems they are just re-packaging the win installer.
I would strongly recommend a Miniconda https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=21405 based solution on Win.

This is just my opinion.

[Kunda1]

I would strongly recommend a Miniconda https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=21405 based solution on Win.
This is just my opinion.

So..in other words, you're not in favor of promoting this solution ?

[sgrogan]

So..in other words, you're not in favor of promoting this solution ?

When I tested last, there was no real dependency tracking. My experience at that time was that chocolatey replicated the win installer (which contains all the dependencies in the bundle, similar to an AppImage). I'm open to be educated if this is not true.

I'm wary of diluting resources. I'm sure I'm not using conda as intended, but it's as close to apt as I've seen for Win. Thanks to @looo our conda based builds have the most advanced dependencies, it has the potential to be a cross-platform rolling release. (Yea I drank the cool-aid)

[Opus]

I use chocolatey and I like it, it's a powerful tool to keep up to date your softwares on Windows platform.
Nevertheless, I don't use it anymore for freecad or blender because I use daily builds.

[GeneFC]

I've made a request to the maintainers to also package the 0.18_pre release

FreeCAD-0.17.13541.9948ee4-WIN-x64 was posted to the FreeCAD releases page on September 12. It was "approved" by Chocolatey on October 13.

Probably not very useful for pre_release development versions of FreeCAD.

Gene

[Kunda1]

Probably not very useful for pre_release development versions of FreeCAD.

Not as effective, maybe but useful, i pushback on that. I think the more testers we have the better..especially for py3/qt5

[sgrogan]

Not as effective, maybe but useful, i pushback on that. I think the more testers we have the better..especially for py3/qt5

Agreed. I'll try to amplify some of the positives of chocolatey (@Opus please correct any misconceptions I might have)

Chocolatey provides a means to update binary packages on Win. FreeCAD doesn't have an "auto-updater" on Win so this is useful. They do virus checks and appear to have some means to clear false positives from the virus checking software. This is VERY useful. I think this means they vet the FreeCAD installer and makes it easier for users to update the package.

More distribution channels are good for FreeCAD, as long as they are quality "re-distributions". Chocolatey seems to be this.

If they could offer "freecad-daily" similar to what we do on the PPA that would be great. One of their pluses is to vet the packages, so I don't know how realistic this is to their model.

If the Chocolatey team "reaches in" here I can try to help, but I don't have the bandwidth to "reach-out"

[Kunda1]

If the Chocolatey team "reaches in" here I can try to help, but I don't have the bandwidth to "reach-out"

Thank you for your fair reply. Much appreciated.
Your stance is noted
Lets see how the chocolatey devs reply.

[Kunda1]

Just tracking the downstream thread: https://github.com/chocolatey/chocolate ... -447196942