vaginessa/just-install

The humble package installer for Windows

Just Install

The simple package installer for Windows

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just-install is a simple program that automates software installation on Windows. Unlike the alternatives, we strive to do one simple thing and do it well: download a setup.exe and install it, without bothering the user.

To see the list of available packages head over to http://just-install.it.

Installation

Run this command in a command prompt, as Administrator:

msiexec.exe /i http://go.just-install.it

If you like more traditional means of installation then download just-install.msi and double click the file to install it yourself.

Usage

To install a package:

just-install firefox

To view a list of available packages:

just-install list

To update the list of available packages:

just-install update

To forcibly re-download an installer and re-run it:

just-install -f firefox

To force installation of a package for a specific architecture (use "x86" or "x86_64"):

just-install -a x86 go

In case you are lost, help is always few keystrokes away:

just-install --help

Development

To contribute a new package see: CONTRIBUTING.md

To work on just-install itself you will need to install and set-up:

• The Go compiler;
• godep.

Once you have done so run:

go get https://github.com/lvillani/just-install

This will place just-install's source code to its appropriate place below the $GOPATH. Once you have done that, go to $GOPATH/src/github.com/lvillani/just-install and run:

godep go build bin/just-install.go

This will produce just-install.exe in the current working directory.

NOTE: build.py is used to publish a new release, you can safely ignore that. Also note that this project is being developed on Linux/OS X machine and cross-compiled to Windows only if/when necessary.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did you make this?

I needed something to automate software installation on Windows VMs at my workplace. The alternatives at that time required either too much work to bootstrap themselves, were too slow, buggy or didn't include the software I wanted. I needed something that could be installed with one, memorable command, was self-contained, and could be launched from an unattended setup script.

What's wrong with the alternatives?

• Chocolatey's biggest sin is that it requires PowerShell on the target system. This makes it ridiculously difficult to install on some operating systems: on Windows XP it is a multi-stage ordeal where you first have to install .NET 2.0, then install PowerShell, then .NET 4 and after that you can finally install Chocolatey itself.
• Ninite is great but it's closed source and there's no obvious way to add a custom package.
• Npackd is probably the most promising of the bunch, but the last time I tried it, it wanted to do some funny stuff such as handling un-installations and it had a tendency to shuffle files around.

I wanted something simple, something that would download an installer and run it silently. That's why I wrote just-install. You can find a complete rationale on my blog post

Credits

Cube icon derived from the one available from Ionicons.