Major New Release of Chocolatey Products

We are thrilled to announce the highly anticipated release of Chocolatey CLI, Chocolatey GUI, Chocolatey GUI Licensed Extension, and Chocolatey Agent version 2.0.0, and Chocolatey Licensed Extension version 6.0.0. These releases bring a wealth of exciting new features and enhancements that will further elevate your package management experience. In this blog post, we’ll highlight the key additions and important considerations for upgrading.

We strongly recommend you read the in-depth upgrade guide for the new releases alongside this blog post. We have also provided a shorter overview of the changes.

New Features

NuGet v3 Feed Support

One of the major updates in this release is the inclusion of NuGet v3 feed support. This empowers users to leverage the extensive NuGet v3 repository managers that are available and easily integrate Chocolatey with those NuGet feeds, opening up a world of possibilities for your software management needs.

.NET 4.8 Framework Requirement

To ensure optimal performance and compatibility, the new versions of Chocolatey CLI now requires the .NET 4.8 framework. Upgrading to the latest .NET framework will enable you to take full advantage of the enhanced capabilities and security features offered by Chocolatey CLI.

Important Considerations

Using a Sonatype Nexus Package Source

If you use a Sonatype Nexus repository as a package source, you need to be aware of a bug in NuGet v2 repositories. See our upgrade guide for more information.

Removal of Side-by-Side Installs

With these new releases, we have decided to remove support for side-by-side installs. You can find more information on this in our upgrade guide.

Changes to choco list Command

As outlined in the 1.0.0 releases, we intended to change the behaviour of the choco list command. As part of the 2.0.0 release, we have completed that change. It now lists only the local packages installed on your system and displays an error if you use the --local-only, -l or -lo option. If you have automations, scripts or integrations that rely on the --limit-output or -r options, this change will not break your workflow as the removed options are ignored in this context. We recommend that you remove those options from your automations or scripts as this behaviour may change in a future release.

Package Version Normalization

Due to updated semantic version requirements imposed by the newer iterations of the NuGet libraries, some version numbers may appear differently than they did in Chocolatey CLI v1.x. As of Chocolatey CLI v2.0.0:

• Version numbers that have fewer than three parts will have the version filled out to three segments (for example, 1.2 will be normalized to 1.2.0).
• Version numbers that have leading zeroes in any part will have those leading zeroes removed (for example, 1.001.2 will be normalized to 1.1.2).

This normalization is applied to the generated nupkg when using choco pack, and will also affect any displayed versions of packages from remote sources.

Other Changes

More information on other changes can be found in our upgrade guide, or overview.

Summary

The release of the new major versions of Chocolatey products marks a significant milestone in the evolution of package management. With the introduction of NuGet v3 feed support, the requirement of .NET 4.8 framework, and various other enhancements, these new versions offer increased compatibility and expanded functionality.

It is important to be aware of the changes and take the necessary precautions when upgrading, and ensure that you review any customizations or configurations made to previous versions.

If you have any doubts about upgrading, any areas that you are just uncertain about or have any questions at all about upgrading, please don’t proceed. Help is available.

Happy packaging with Chocolatey 2.0.0!