In short, Scoop installs all your apps in the user home dir. Apps are not installed through an installer, but through a .zip file. A pro is that you do not need to be admin on your PC for Scoop to function (handy for PCs that are not in your control). A con I've encountered is that Windows is not very friendly towards apps that are not installed through an installer. I've installed IrfanView through Scoop, but for some reason, Windows restores "Photos" as default app for opening pictures a few times a week, this was not the case when I installed IrfanView with an installer.

^ I've installed IrfanView through Scoop, but for some reason, Windows restores "Photos" as default app for opening pictures a few times a week, this was not the case when I installed IrfanView with an installer.

This may not be Scoops fault. I installed Irfanview with choco and have to reset my default programs setting every so often, presumably since Windows 10 takes user settings as suggestions for the Microsoft PM to ignore every few weeks when the OKRs get thin :).

Here's a comparison page:

https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/wiki/Chocolatey-Compari...

One advantage is that scoop installs (most) tools into a common place and search path, and thus doesn't pollute environment variables as much.

I'd not heard of Scoop before today but have used chocolatey extensively in the past.

However I'm wary of all these tools (including brew on Mac) as they all feel like a pretty efficient way to main line your own personal supply chain attack into your dev machine!

For that reason I now try to use them sparingly and with a high degree of suspicion.

With most package managers you can review package sources (e.g. "choco info" for chocolatey or "brew info" / "brew edit" for homebrew).

As for threat model it comes down to whether using package management poses larger risk than doing everything manually and risking running a range of outdated packages.

Yes, fair points. It's always a judgement call - which is the lesser of two evils...

True, but it is also an easy way to keep your software up to date which is in itself a security feature. So a bit of a trade off.

It's a lot faster than chocolatey, choco gets painfully slow with many packages due to being serial. Scoop is considerably faster

Seems simpler to me. Active community, big directory of buckets and apps.

https://rasa.github.io/scoop-directory/by-apps

Scoop installs all the files locally by default and doesn't need to be run through an elevated shell. In junction to this, there's also usually less trouble with leftover files after uninstalling programs.

The official software repo might be smaller than chocolate's, but to my eye, as it is moderated through a single open github repo, it seems much simpler.

Tangentially related, but I wish that running elevated from the shell was more ergonomic. I want to just be able to have a sudo-like command to run elevated from an otherwise non-elevated shell. Instead I have to launch a new instance of the shell host that's elevated. ConEmu makes this feel more seamless by doing some window manipulation hacks to bring elevated and non-elevated into tabs of the same window, but Windows Terminal doesn't want to do anything so hacky which means having a second Windows Terminal window when running elevated.

I wonder if improving this is possible within the current design of Windows or if it would be a fundamental change in how it handles user privileges.

>I want to just be able to have a sudo-like command to run elevated from an otherwise non-elevated shell.

Won't the runas command (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/i...) let you do this - run a command as Administrator without opening another command/powershell prompt?

cinst gsudo

Works like on linux. Runas and friends are junk.

https://github.com/gerardog/gsudo

I'll have to check this one out. I vaguely remember coming across runas in the past and it not meeting my needs.

In addition to the alternatives others have mentioned, the author of `scoop` also has a package available for `scoop` named `sudo`, described as "An approximation of the Unix sudo command. Shows a UAC popup window unfortunately."

From a non-elevated shell (cmd or ps), you can run `sudo <command>` to a roughly equivalent effect from *nix terminals. I find it meets my needs.

> ... a sudo-like command to run elevated from an otherwise non-elevated shell.

Something like RunAs? [0]

--

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runas

That's what I was wondering? It's been around for literally decades. I'm 99.9% linux user now but back in the day runas came in handy on windows for daemons that I would write and test to run in the background as various users or admin.