4.2. Chocolatey

Chocolatey is a Windows package manager that can be used to install (and update) many of the packages required for Wireshark development. Chocolatey can be obtained from the website or from a Command Prompt:

C:\>@powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted -Command "iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString(_https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1_))" && SET PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin

or a Powershell prompt:

PS:\>iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString(_https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1_))

Chocolatey sometimes installs packages in unexpected locations. Python is a notable example. While it’s typically installed in a top-level directory, e.g. C:\Python37 or in %PROGRAMFILES%, e.g. C:\Program Files\Python37, Chocolatey tends to install it under C:\ProgramData\chocolatey or C:\Tools. If you want to avoid this behavior you’ll probably want to install Python using the packages from python.org.

Other package managers for Windows include the Windows Package Manager (winget) and Scoop. As of January 2022 neither option provides all of the packages we require, but that might change in the future.