New Tool: Chocolatey Application Wrapper for MDT

Update: Updated script location

I’ve been spending some time recently working on my own private Deployment Share, one of the downsides is the overhead of keeping my application packages up to date. The worst offenders are of course Google Chrome, and the Adobe Flash and PDF readers, seems like these packages are constantly changing, and I need to find and update frequently. If only there was a better way, something to make adding packages easier like my Dell Driver Pack Update tool, or the ZTIWindowsUpdate.wsf script found in MDT to run Windows Update/WSUS. Any way to keep my environment up to date without the manual hassle. :^)

There are several tools out there on the internet that help and assist you with application package management. At first I started looking at Ninite.com, however their tools are designed for End Users, and if you want to have an automated solution (like I need), then you must pay a per-machine licensing fee. (yuck)

Then I started looking at Chocolatey, which provides a command line interface for installing programs similar to Ninite.com without the UI fluff. I come across a couple of packages that were found in Ninite but not found in Chocolatey, but that list is small: (Google Talk, AIM, Yahoo!, KMPlayer, Winamp, K-Lite Codecs, Mozy, RealVNC) and the list of packages found in Chocolatey is very large. Cool!

Anther advantage of Chocolatey is that it’s in alignment with future Microsoft plans around packaging (see OneGet). However Oneget still requires some installation overhead that I didn’t want to deal with for this release, so something for the future.

So I spent some time experimenting, reverse engineering Chocolatey and scripting a workable solution, and I think I have something ready for use.

The Script

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/keithga/DeployShared/master/Templates/Distribution/Scripts/Extras/Install-Chocolatey.ps1

The script is fairly straight forwards. When calling the script, we pass in a list of parameters in through the command line, if no parameters are passed in, then we will default to the Chocolatey001 … Chocolatey00n variables you may be familiar with when using MDT and adding variables into your CustomSettings.ini file.

[CmdletBinding()]
param(
    [parameter(ValueFromRemainingArguments=$true)]
    [string[]]$Packages = $TSEnvList:Chocolatey
)

Then we determine a local path for the Chocolatey install, looking to see if it was already installed, then forcing it to use the local MDT temp directory (C:\MININT) if present. This means that Chocolatey won’t be available after MDT installation, great for image capture.

write-verbose "Construct a local path for Chocolatey"
if ($env:ChocolateyInstall -eq $Null)
{
    $env:ChocolateyInstall = [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable( "ChocolateyInstall" , [System.EnvironmentVariableTarget]::User)
    if ($env:ChocolateyInstall -eq $Null)
    {
        $env:ChocolateyInstall = join-path ([System.Environment]::GetFolderPath("CommonApplicationData")) "Chocolatey"
        if ($tsenv:LogPath -ne $null)
        {
            $env:ChocolateyInstall = join-path $tsenv:LogPath "Chocolatey"
        }
    }
}

We look to see if the Choco.exe program is found locally, and if not we will install Chocolatey from the internet.

$ChocoExe = join-path $env:ChocolateyInstall "bin\choco.exe"

write-verbose "Chocolatey Program: $ChocoExe"
if ( ! (test-path $ChocoExe ) )
{
    write-verbose "Install Chocolatey..."
    Invoke-Expression ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))
    if (!(test-path $ChocoExe))
    {
        throw "Chocolatey Install not found!"
    }
}

Finally, we will go through all the packages requested, and kick off the installation. The list of requested packages will come from the command line

write-verbose "Install Chocolatey packages from within MDT"
foreach ( $Package in $Packages ) 
{
    write-verbose "Install Chocolatey Package: $ChocoExe $Package"
    & $ChocoExe install $Package 2>&1 | out-string
}

write-verbose "Chocolatey install done"

Had some problems with Chocolatey and the MDT PowerShell provider with some overly verbose output, so I redirect all errors to the Standard Console, that’s what the weird 2>&1 is all about.

Integration with MDT LiteTouch

To add into your MDT LiteTouch environment, simply download the ZTIChocolatey-Wrapper.ps1 into your \\Server\DeploymentShare$\Scripts folder.

Then add a new step into your task sequence pointing to the powershell script: %ScriptRoot%\ZTIChocolatey-Wrapper.ps1

You can add entries into your CustomSettings.ini file, here is a snippet from my server:

[Settings]
Priority=UUID,Role,Default
Properties=ModelAlias,UseWindowsUpdate,CustomizeStartScreen,Chocolatey(*)

[Default]
OSInstall=Y
SkipCapture=YES
...
Chocolatey001=VLC
Chocolatey002=7zip
Chocolatey003=speccy
Chocolatey004=WindowsADK
Applications001={91a974c5-6a30-4924-bec2-ade0f82793bc}
Applications002={631f0a5a-ed76-47b8-8ed4-74aeb43f4b49}

The Install Applications step will install the Applications001 and Applications002 Guid I selected above, and the Chocolatey install will install the VLC, 7zip, speccy, and WindowsADK steps above.

Adding the Chocolatey wrapper as an Application

Alternatively you can create an application package (without source files), and use the following command:

powershell.exe -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted "%ScriptRoot%\ZTICHocolatey-Wrapper.ps1" -verbose -Packages "AdobeReader"

Future

The next logical step is to create a Litetouch Wizard page for Chocolatey, allowing you to select packages from a list in the GUI. But I’m a bit stumped on the best way to get a list of all available packages ( clist.exe ), *and* get the package metadata in a graceful way. Right now, I only know how to download each package from the server as *.zip file, extract out the *.xml file and display. If you know how to use PowerShell to get the list of packages *and* get a list of descriptions, versions, and icons, please let me know.

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