Chocolatey and Scoop

Chocolatey 15,799 (github.com/chocolatey/choco (https://github.com/chocolatey/choco 11,526 ), Apache-2.0) predates winget 26,463 by nine years (2011). Its packages are NuGet 7,115 files with PowerShell 55,538 install scripts; the community repository lists 11,779, each virus-scanned and test-installed before approval. Chocolatey CLI 2.7.4 (August 2026) needs an administrator shell, which this book's host does not use, so its documented install is not run here.

Installing Chocolatey and jq from an elevated shell (not run here)Shell

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol =
  [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072     # enable TLS 1.2
iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString(
  'https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))
choco install jq -y

Scoop 195,554 (github.com/ScoopInstaller/Scoop (https://github.com/ScoopInstaller/Scoop 24,704 ), Unlicense/MIT) takes the opposite approach: everything installs into ~\scoop for the current user, with no administrator rights and no UAC prompts. Packages are JSON manifests in Git 1,932 repositories called buckets; the default main bucket holds 1,658 command-line tools, and extras adds GUI apps.

Installing Scoop and jq without administrator rightsShell

irm get.scoop.sh -OutFile install-scoop.ps1      # read the script before you run it
.\install-scoop.ps1
scoop install jq
jq --version
scoop uninstall jq

Output

Initializing...
Downloading...
Creating shim...
Adding ~\scoop\shims to your path.
Scoop was installed successfully!
Type 'scoop help' for instructions.
Installing 'jq' (1.8.2) [64bit] from 'main' bucket
Downloading https://github.com/jqlang/jq/releases/download/jq-1.8.2/jq-windows-amd64.exe#/jq.ex
  e (1,011.0 KB)...
Checking hash of jq-windows-amd64.exe ... ok.
Linking ~\scoop\apps\jq\current => ~\scoop\apps\jq\1.8.2
Creating shim for 'jq'.
'jq' (1.8.2) was installed successfully!
'jq' suggests installing 'jid'.
jq-1.8.2
Uninstalling 'jq' (1.8.2).
Removing shim 'jq.shim'.
Removing shim 'jq.exe'.
Unlinking ~\scoop\apps\jq\current
'jq' was uninstalled.

Scoop keeps each version in its own folder, points a current junction at the active one and puts small shims in ~\scoop\shims, the only folder it adds to PATH; it is Homebrew 6,457 's Cellar design on Windows. scoop uninstall scoop removes Scoop and everything it installed. Run on this host while jq 133,477 was still installed, it stopped at jq's read-only current junction (attrib -R /L fixed it); with jq removed first, it finished cleanly.

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