Rapidly Setting Up an Azure PC with Chocolatey

Azure is a great platform.  It is easy to spin up developer and test machines.  Microsoft has default installs of Visual Studio but there is currently no way to select other software.  Silent installs are nothing new but Chocolatey takes it a step further to be a distribution point of installers.  Think of Chocolatey as NuGet but with applications instead.  With Chocolatey and Azure you can rapidly install the software that you need to work effectively.  This also works great if you purchase a new PC or laptop or decide to Nuke and Pave a machine.   

    

To install Chocolatey open an admin command window and execute this statement:

@powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin

To make installing applications easier with Chocolately, I created a batch file to be called by a parent batch file called InstallApp.bat.  It has standard parameters of -y which is to accept all defaults.

cinst %1 -y --allow-empty-checksums

I then created the parent batch file with a list of the applications I wanted to install before installing Visual Studio.  If Visual Studio is already pre-installed on an Azure machine you can simply create one big batch file.

REM Media

call InstallApp paint.net

call InstallApp foxitreader

call InstallApp cutepdf

call InstallApp evernote

call InstallApp imgburn

call InstallApp zim

call InstallApp anyvideoconverter

call InstallApp notepadplusplus.install

call InstallApp picpick.portable

call InstallApp todoist

REM Web

call InstallApp firefox

call InstallApp googlechrome

call InstallApp flashplayerplugin

call InstallApp skype

call InstallApp teamviewer

REM Utilities

call InstallApp 7zip.install

call InstallApp filezilla

call InstallApp chocolateygui

call InstallApp winmerge

call InstallApp virtualclonedrive

call InstallApp beyondcompare

call InstallApp roboform

call InstallApp javaruntime

call InstallApp truecrypt

call InstallApp windirstat

REM Developer Tools before Visual Studio

call InstallApp tortoisesvn

call InstallApp expresso

call InstallApp ilspy

call InstallApp sliksvn

call InstallApp git.install

call InstallApp tortoisegit

call InstallApp visualstudiocode

call InstallApp baretail

call InstallApp nunit

call InstallApp httrack

call InstallApp xenulinksleuth

After installing Visual Studio I have a set of applications that I like to install:

REM Install After Visual Studio is Installed

call InstallApp visualsvn

call InstallApp resharper-platform

call InstallApp mono

That’s it.  Simply run the batch file and all the software that you need will be downloaded and installed without intervention.  Come back later and your PC will be ready.