Chocolatey Community Repository FAQ

Chocolatey Community Repository FAQ

How Do I Ask Questions About a Package?

If you have a question about the package, please follow both these steps:

  1. Contact the package Maintainers. Some Maintainers have opted-out of receiving email, so this option may not be available.
  2. Find the package source and if the repository supports it, raise a discussion. The majority of Maintainers have the package source on a platform such as GitHub which allows issues and discussions to be created, if enabled.

Package Source link on the Chocolatey Community Repository package page

How Do I Ask Questions About the Package Software?

If you have questions about the software the package installs, please contact the Software Vendor/Author. Maintainers do not provide support for the software that is packaged.

If you want to ask questions about the package, see here.

How Do I Contact the Package Maintainers?

You may want to contact the package maintainers with package questions, or to report a broken or outdated package. On the Chocolatey Community Repository package page, click the Contact Maintainers link.

Contact Maintainers link on the Chocolatey Community Repository package page

If your question is about the software installed by the package, please contact the Software Vendor or Author directly as package maintainers cannot provide software support. The exception is if the package Maintainer is also the Software Vendor/Author. You can find out who the package maintainers are on the Chocolatey Community Repository package page.

Package Maintainers profile links on the Chocolatey Community Repository

How Do I Contact the Site Admins?

You should contact the Site Admins if:

  • You have read this FAQ and your question is not answered.

You should not contact the Site Admins to:

To contact the Site Admins, click the Contact Site Admins link to contact the site Administrators. Please include as much information as possible including dates and times. The Site Administrators will then follow up with you.

Contact Site Admins link on the Chocolatey Community Repository package page

How Do I Create Chocolatey Packages?

It’s easy to create and maintain packages.

How Do I Find the Package Source?

On the Chocolatey Community Repository package page, click the Package Source link, if it’s available.

Package Source link on the Chocolatey Community Repository

Not all Maintainers provide a publicly accessible package source. If the Package Source link is missing, you also could try to find a link to the package sources in the profiles of the Maintainers.

Package Maintainers profile links on the Chocolatey Community Repository Package Maintainer profile on the Chocolatey Community Repository with GitHub repository link

How Do I Inspect the Contents of a Chocolatey Package?

NOTE

Packages submitted before 2014 do not have files listed under the Files section.

The contents of every Chocolatey package is available to be inspected both on the Chocolatey Community Repository package page under the Files section.

Chocolatey Community Repository package files section with chocolateyInstall.ps1 PowerShell script expanded

You can also download the actual package and inspect the contents. On the left menu there is a Download button where you can download and rename the .nupkg file extension to .zip, extract it and see the contents.

Download package button on the Chocolatey Community Repository

How Do I See All Versions Of a Package

Packages can have multiple version, both stable and prerelease. All of these versions are listed on the package page and can be found by scrolling down the page to the Version History section and clicking the link.

Version History section of the package page on the Chocolatey Community Repository

Only a limited number are shown initially. If there are more version available, click the Show Additional Versions button to view them all.

How Do I See the Package Source Code?

See this FAQ question.

How To Report An Abusive Package

NOTE

Do not use the Report Abuse form to submit reports of:

We take package abuse very seriously. But what is package abuse, or an abusive package?

There are many definitions of what could make a package, or the software it installs, abusive. An abusive package could be:

  • A package that installs software that contains malware, adware, or potentially unwanted applications (PUA).
  • A package that violates distribution rights.

If a package is abusive, please report it by clicking on the Report Abuse link on the package page, fill out and submit the form. The Site Administrators will follow up with you.

How to report abuse on the Chocolatey Community Repository

Why do I get a 500 Internal Server Error when trying to push my package?

If you receive a 500 Internal Server Error when pushing a package, you may have a malformed package that the server was unable to process. One such case is documented in a GitHub issue.

Make sure that none of the <file ...> entries in the nuspec file of your package have name collisions with other files or folders being packed. This is usually rare but can be encountered more commonly if you are trying to pack files which don’t have a file extension. For example, if you have <file> entries that may look like this, you will need to change the name of the file or folder in the package to avoid collision:

<file src="bin\*" target="bin" />
<file src="file-with-no-extension" target="bin" />

There are two possible solutions for this particular case:

<!-- option 1: rename the file to have a file extension -->
<file src="bin\*" target="bin" />
<file src="file-with.extension" target="bin" />

<!-- option 2: specify the full path to the file in the package as the target, instead of just the folder name -->
<file src="bin\*" target="bin" />
<file src="file-with-no-extension" target="bin\file-with-no-extension" />

See an issue we raised on the NuGet repository for more information on the NuGet bug which can cause this kind of malformed package.

If you receive a 500: Internal Server Error that is not related to this specific case, please file an issue on GitHub so we can investigate the issue.