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Nuget and Chocolatey

This is an example of how to use the Strongbox artifact repository manager with Chocolatey using Nuget.

Pre-requisites

Before you proceed please make sure you have installed and configured a Strongbox Distribution.

Example project

The "Hello, Strongbox!" example project can be found here.

Installing choco

Windows

Chocolatey is available natively on Windows and can be installed following the official documentation

Mono

If you are running Linux/MacOS and would like to use mono, there is no pre-built binary. You will need to head to the chocolatey repository for instructions on how to build it.

Linux / MacOS / Docker

We have already built a linux docker image with pre-built and configured choco which we are also using in our integration tests. It is published at strongboxci/alpine and you can feel free to use it for development purposes.

It is OK to ignore warnings about a system reboot being requested since the nothing here is affected by it.

Configuring Choco

Get API key

The NuGet protocol assumes that users need to be authenticated with API Key to be able to deploy or delete your packages. Strongbox provides the REST API to get an API Key for specified user:

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FOR /F %i IN ('curl -u admin http://localhost:48080/api/users/admin/generate-security-token') DO set API_KEY=%i
echo %API_KEY%

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API_KEY=`curl -u admin http://localhost:48080/api/users/admin/generate-security-token`
echo $API_KEY

Enter your Strongbox password. (Default is: admin/password)

The output when echoing the %API_KEY% should not be empty and should look something like this:

eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpc3MiOiJTdHJvbmdib3giLCJqdGkiOiJtU3N0TGVOMGpabzJNcmdleGdWSUVRIiwic3ViIjoiYWRtaW4iLCJzZWN1cml0eS10b2tlbi1rZXkiOiJhZG1pbi1zZWNyAMQifQ.SgpKb4yUidK8ATbGxDOfjGjHfEF22PIFyzlpk-Rpad0

Save API key in choco

In this step, we will be setting the apikey which will be used to authenticate against the source in the future steps.

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# This needs to be run in an administrative command prompt or powershell!
set REPO_URL=http://localhost:48080/storages/storage-nuget/nuget-releases
choco apikey -k %API_KEY% -s "%REPO_URL%"

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REPO_URL=http://localhost:48080/storages/storage-nuget/nuget-releases
choco apikey -k $API_KEY -s "$REPO_URL"

The output should be like follows:

Chocolatey v.10.15
Added ApiKey for http://localhost:48080/storages/storage-nuget/nuget-releases

Add Strongbox repository to Chocolatey package sources

To manage packages, you'll need to configure Chocolatey to access your storages by running the following command:

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# This needs to be run as administrative command prompt or powershell!
choco source add -n=strongbox -s "%REPO_URL%" --priority=1

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choco source add -n=strongbox -s "$REPO_URL" --priority=1

The output should be like follows:

Chocolatey v0.10.15
Added strongbox - http://localhost:48080/storages/storage-nuget/nuget-releases (Priority 1)

Important notes

  • You cannot deploy to group repositories, as they are only for resolving artifacts. Also, please note that the nuget-public group includes the nuget.org repository itself
  • You can only deploy to hosted repositories.
  • The deploy URLs would begin with /storages/{storageId}/{repositoryId} (i.e. /storages/storage-nuget/nuget-releases, nuget-snapshot, etc)

How to

Create a package

The command below will create a folder named hello-chocolatey with some files including a .nuspec and a folder called tools.

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cd C:\some\path
choco new --name=hello-chocolatey --version=1.0.0

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cd /some/path
choco new --name=hello-chocolatey --version=1.0.0
Example output
Chocolatey <version>
2 validations performed. 1 success(es), 0 warning(s), and 0 error(s).

Creating a new package specification at C:\Users\User\Documents\hello-chocolatey
Generating template to a file
 at 'C:\Users\User\Documents\hello-chocolatey\hello-chocolatey.nuspec'
Generating template to a file
 at 'C:\Users\User\Documents\hello-chocolatey\tools\chocolateyinstall.ps1'
Generating template to a file
 at 'C:\Users\User\Documents\hello-chocolatey\tools\chocolateybeforemodify.ps1'
Generating template to a file
 at 'C:\Users\User\Documents\hello-chocolatey\tools\chocolateyuninstall.ps1'
Generating template to a file
 at 'C:\Users\User\Documents\hello-chocolatey\tools\LICENSE.txt'
Generating template to a file
 at 'C:\Users\User\Documents\hello-chocolatey\tools\VERIFICATION.txt'
Generating template to a file
 at 'C:\Users\User\Documents\hello-chocolatey\ReadMe.md'
Generating template to a file
 at 'C:\Users\User\Documents\hello-chocolatey\_TODO.txt'
Successfully generated hello-chocolatey package specification files
 at 'C:\Users\User\Documents\hello-chocolatey'

Additional instructions

  • Delete _TODO.txt and ReadMe.md in the hello-chocolatey directory.
  • Delete chocolateybeforemodify.ps1 and chocolateyuninstall.ps1 in the tools sub-directory. The LICENSE.txt and VERIFICATION.txt can also be deleted, although this is not required.
  • Edit chocolateyinstall.ps1 in the tools sub-directory with a text editor and replace the entire content with Write-Output 'Package would install here'.
  • If you are running on a Linux file system, edit hello-chocolatey.nuspec and replace "tools\**" with "tools/**"(backwards to forwards slash) in the file section. It should be the forth row from the bottom.
  • You can also check against the example files located in the strongbox-examples repository.

Make Chocolatey NuGet package

Execute the following command in the same directory as hello-chocolatey.nuspec:

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cd C:\some\path\hello-chocolatey
choco pack

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cd /some/path/to/hello-chocolatey
choco pack
Example output
Chocolatey <version>
2 validations performed. 1 success(es), 0 warning(s), and 0 error(s).

Attempting to build package from 'hello-chocolatey.nuspec'.
Successfully created package 'C:\Users\User\Documents\hello-chocolatey\hello-chocolatey.1.0.0.nupkg'

Push NuGet package into Strongbox repository

Execute the following command in the directory with hello-chocolatey.1.0.0.nupkg:

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cd C:\some\path\hello-chocolatey
choco push --source "%REPO_URL%" --force

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cd /some/path/to/hello-chocolatey
choco push --source "$REPO_URL" --force
Example output
Chocolatey <version>
2 validations performed. 1 success(es), 0 warning(s), and 0 error(s).

Attempting to push hello-chocolatey.1.0.0.nupkg to http://localhost:48080/storages/storage-nuget/nuget-releases
hello-chocolatey 1.0.0 was pushed successfully to http://localhost:48080/storages/storage-nuget/nuget-releases

Search for packages in Strongbox repositories

Execute the following command:

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choco search -s "%REPO_URL%"

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choco search -s "$REPO_URL"
Example output
Chocolatey <version>
2 validations performed. 1 success(es), 0 warning(s), and 0 error(s).

hello-chocolatey 1.0.0
1 packages found.

Delete a Chocolatey package from strongbox

Chocolatey does not have a built in way to delete packages from the server. As a workaround, you can use nuget to delete packages, see hello-strongbox-nuget-visual-studio for more details.

Install a package

To install a choco package you should use the command below. 

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# Execute the following command as a administrator!
choco install hello-chocolatey -s "%REPO_URL%"

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choco install hello-chocolatey -s "$REPO_URL"

Tip

Adding -s "{repo_url}" is optional. However, choco will loop through all sources until it finds the package which might be time consuming so you might want to force choco using the right source.

Example output
Chocolatey <version>
2 validations performed. 1 success(es), 0 warning(s), and 0 error(s).

Installing the following packages:
hello-chocolatey.1.0.0.nupkg
By installing you accept licenses for the packages.

hello-chocolatey v1.0.0
hello-chocolatey package files install completed. Performing other installation steps.
Package would install here
 The install of hello-chocolatey was successful.
  Software install location not explicitly set, could be in package or
  default install location if installer.

Chocolatey installed 1/1 packages.
 See the log for details (C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\logs\chocolatey.log).

Uninstall a package

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# Execute the following command as a administrator!
choco uninstall hello-chocolatey

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choco uninstall hello-chocolatey
Example output
Chocolatey <version>
2 validations performed. 1 success(es), 0 warning(s), and 0 error(s).

Uninstalling the following packages:
hello-chocolatey

hello-chocolatey v1.0.0
 Skipping auto uninstaller - No registry snapshot.
 hello-chocolatey has been successfully uninstalled.

Chocolatey uninstalled 1/1 packages.
 See the log for details (C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\logs\chocolatey.log).

See also

Last update: 2020-12-07