Remove dependency on Chocolatey

[cinderblock]

What is the problem this feature will solve?

Windows users are concerned by the check box in the installer (#30242) - why not remove the external dependency?

Chocolatey is an independent, open core (with proprietary extensions), package manager for Windows that recreates existing functionality included in all current versions of Windows. Chocolatey has its own set of problems, mostly stemming from the independent partially closed source for profit nature of the project.

What is the feature you are proposing to solve the problem?

winget is an open source package manager from Microsoft and is installed by default on modern versions of Windows. It has all the packages that Chocolatey wants to install.

This is equivalent to the checkbox, without Chocolatey:

winget install -e --id Python.Python.3.12
winget install -e --id Microsoft.VisualStudio.2022.Community --override "--quiet --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools"

What alternatives have you considered?

WiX Toolset, which is already in use, might have all the capabilities necessary to install these optional dependencies without using any PowerShell scripts.

Additional Resources

• I've created a trivial program to test if native addons' dependencies are installed and working.
• https://github.com/nodejs/node-gyp#on-windows

[aduh95]

The issue is that the Windows installer suggests to install Chocolatey, correct? If someone sends a PR to use a different package manager, it seems likely to me that it'd be accepted.

[cinderblock]

That seems correct to me. Most other installers I've used don't install some other tool to install more optional tools.

I guess there isn't really a reason to depend on winget either. In my experience, usually installers with optional features give a more detailed drop down that allows users to opt in to each set of optional features directly - no external tooling necessary.

I'm thinking something like this:

Looking at the code, there are only a couple references to "chocolatey". It should be easy enough to replace/update install_tools.bat to use winget - but maybe something higher level in the installer configuration would look better - maybe a user wants to use some existing python binary and to use gcc instead of VCTools (getting node-gyp to support that flexibility is outside the scope of this change) or different versions of Visual Studio.

[Daverd-GM]

don't know if this is the right place but also the chocolatey script for installing the build tools is outdated for node 22 because it still installs the vs2019 tools

[cinderblock]

I'm wondering if the best solution for this is to use WiX Toolset's features directly. I suspect it would be possible for it to download and install the necessary tools (with the same check box) without the PowerShell script.

However, I'm not very familiar with the WiX Toolset and am not sure quite where to start, or even how to test it...

Does anyone have a opinions on keeping the PowerShell script and changing it to use winget vs using WiX Toolset to directly install the optional dependencies? Can someone speak to if WiX Toolset supports installing optional dependencies like this?

Edit: StackOverflow seems to suggest using a "Burn".

[nemchik]

No idea about WiX, but I like the idea of winget. I believe Win10 does not include winget by default, so it would need to be installed. I think (not positive) Win11 does include winget out of the box.