Scoop is a tiny command-line installer for Windows, which helps to organize user's apps in more convenient way. All of them are installed by default in home directory or in selected by the use directory, and of course this is not the only feature:
- updating all of them with one command
- continuously growing database of supported apps
- fully portable between Windows version that support at least
PowerShell 5 and
.NET Framework 4.5
Those features mean the users finally have a tool similar to Linux package managers like dpkg/apt, yum/dnf, portage (btw very powerful), slackpkg, Homebrew for MacOS and Chocolatey/Ninite/OneGet for Windows.
It works like this (assuming the user OS meets the requirements):
1. Open a PowerShell command prompt
2. Write "scoop search nameofyourapp"
3. If it's found in the buckets (collections of apps in scoop) write "scoop install name-of-your-app"
4. After successful app installation (scoop warns if there are problems during installation procedure and suggests what to do to fix them) the user must open "Start Menu -> All Programs -> Scoop Apps" and click on the corresponding shortcut to start the freshly installed application
There are also limitations:
- number of bucketed apps is still less than those in Chocolatey
- sometimes changes in app version or small code errors in app manifests block the user from successfully installing or updating desired apps. Usually an update to scoop fixes that because the whole development is on
GitHub where every scoop user can report the problems
