Coming from the Unix/Linux world, I came across Nuget and Chocolatey as a possibility to help me automate the provisioning, configuration and software installation of Windows servers. My scenario currently is to clone Windows 2008 VM's with pre-populated software such as Adobe Acrobat, Java JRE, .NET Framework 4.5.1, Firefox, Notepad++, etc. However, much of this software is not needed for several USE cases for QA server. I was planning on building a local Nuget/Chocolatey repository, somehow package the Acrobat, JRE, Firefox, and clone clean servers, and use Powershell/Chocolatey to pull and install from these repos. Is this a valid strategy or is there something better? Also, can anyone show me the links to package JRE, Firefox, etc., into Nuget packages to be hosted locally?
1 Answers
Yes, this seems like a valid strategy to me.
In terms of packaging locally, you shouldn't need to do anything. The nupkg packages that already exist on Chocolatey.org can be downloaded and hosted elsewhere, either in a file share, or on your own internal Nuget Server.
With that in place, all you would need to do is update Chocolatey to use an alternative source. Rob maintains a list of available Nuget Servers which you can install locally. The main one, off the top of my head would be ProGet, from Inedo.
To be clear though, which these nupkg packages downloaded, the actual installation files will still be downloaded from the internet. It wasn't clear from your question if you wanted the installation files hosted locally as well. If this is the case, then you might want to look at this project, which is an interesting attempt at solving the completely offline installation scenario with Chocolatey. I haven't personally used it, so can't fully vouch for it.
- 11,952
- 3
- 57
- 90
- 17,610
- 5
- 42
- 60
-
@ferventcoder, thanks for the edit, I knew you would find this! Ha ha :-) – Gary Ewan Park Oct 15 '15 at 06:16
-
Only took a few months. You answered this in January. :) – ferventcoder Oct 15 '15 at 12:07