Call a chocolatey package in powershell based on its package name

Question

I recently set up a new machine and installed/enabled chocolatey. As far as I can remember I was able to call a package via powershell based on the package name. For instance, if I wanted to install mongodb, I used to type choco install mongodb - and was able to call the mongo client by simply typing mongo in the powershell console. Is there a way to see if something is bound to a specific shim ? or is there an option to enable it?

Answer 1

I don't think there is a way to match packages with shims, but you can check the executable a shim points to, along with general information about it and what would happen if you run the shim:

shimname.exe --shimgen-noop

I tried crafting a command to check all the shims in the $env:ChocolateyInstall\bin directory, but there's no guarantee that executables there are going to be a shim. I tried filtering out the known Chocolatey executables as well, but some packages (like putty) drop their real executables right in the bin folder, and won't respond to the shim parameters like you'd expect.

---

Looking at the Install-BinFile cmdlet, it doesn't look like Chocolatey provides a way to track shims at all as it doesn't even do this itself. I think it uses the same logic to track automatically generated shims at package uninstall time, but any shims explicitly created with Install-BinFile also need to have Uninstall-BinFile called in the associated chocolateyUninstall.ps1 script or the shim won't be removed at package uninstall time.

Short of crawling the $env:ChocolateyInstall\lib\packageName directory for potential automatic shim names, or the chocolateyInstall.ps1/chocolateyUninstall.ps1 scripts for explicit shims, you're not going to be able to match a shim to a package.