How To Create a Zip Package

How To Create a Zip Package

At its heart, a Chocolatey package is just PowerShell. This makes Chocolatey packages capable of doing almost anything that PowerShell can do! In this walk-through we'll learn how to leverage zip archives within our packaging.

If you have not yet read Preparing Your Environment for Package Creation, please do so now and ensure you are ready to go before continuing.

Using Get-ChocolateyUnzip

In our first example, we'll leverage Get-ChocolateyUnzip to extract a Zip archive to disk. This function requires that you include the Zip archive as part of the package. We'll look at downloading an archive from an external location later in our Creating A Large Package tutorial.

Creating Your Package

Perform the following steps:

  1. Open the tutorials folder in VS Code.
  2. Press Ctrl+Shift+P or use the View menu and click on Command Palette..
  3. Type Chocolatey: and select Create new Chocolatey package from the list of available commands.
  4. Give your package a name, e.g. embedded-zip.
  5. Select Default Template when prompted.

Creating Your Install Script

Your new package will be created in the tutorials folder, visible in the Explorer pane of VS Code. Expand the tools folder and open up the chocolateyInstall.ps1 file. The chocolateyInstall.ps1 file is executed when you run either the install or upgrade commands with your package.

The default template fills this file out for us and provides a LOT of information. For our purposes, we can press Ctrl+A and delete the contents of this file.

With our install script now empty, paste the following code into the file:

$ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop' # stop on all errors
$toolsDir   = "$(Split-Path -parent $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Definition)"
$zipArchive = Join-Path $toolsDir -ChildPath 'tutorial.zip'


$unzipArgs = @{
  FileFullPath = $zipArchive
  Destination = 'C:\zip_tutorial'
}

Get-ChocolateyUnzip @unzipArgs

Save chocolateyInstall.ps1 and close the file.

Download Example Zip Archive

Download the Zip archive we will use in this tutorial. Once downloaded, copy the Zip archive to the `tools`` directory in your VS Code Explorer pane.

Creating Your Uninstall Script

The chocolateyUninstall.ps1 script is executed you run the uninstall command with your package.

In the VS Code Explorer pane, find and open the chocolateyUninstall.ps1 file. Replace the contents of this file with the following:

$ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop' # stop on all errors
Uninstall-ChocolateyZipPackage -Packagename $env:ChocolateyPackageName -ZipFileName 'tutorial.zip'

# Uninstall-ChocolateyZipPackage will remove the FILES from the archive.
# If you wish to remove the DIRECTORY they were extracted too,
# you'll additionally have to handle that in this script.
Remove-Item 'C:\zip_tutorial'

Creating Your .nuspec File

The .nuspec file is the metadata for your package. It provides information to Chocolatey CLI such as:

  • Package ID
  • Package Version
  • Author
  • Synopsis
  • Dependencies

For packages being published to the Chocolatey Community Repository additional information is required. You can find information on .nuspec requirements in our Package Validator Rules documentation.

In the VS Code Explorer pane, find and open the embedded-zip.nuspec file. Replace the contents of this file with the following:

<!-- Do not remove this test for UTF-8: if “Ω” doesn’t appear as greek uppercase omega letter enclosed in quotation marks, you should use an editor that supports UTF-8, not this one. -->
<package xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/packaging/2015/06/nuspec.xsd">
  <metadata>
    <id>embedded-zip</id>
    <version>1.0.0</version>
    <title>embedded-zip (Install)</title>
    <authors>Chocolatey Software</authors>
    <tags>embedded-zip zip tutorial</tags>
    <summary>Tutorial for embedded zip file package</summary>
    <description>Tutorial for embedded zip file package</description>
  </metadata>
  <files>
    <!-- this section controls what actually gets packaged into the Chocolatey package -->
    <file src="tools\**" target="tools" />
  </files>
</package>

Compile Your Package

The pack command is used to compile your Chocolatey package, giving it a .nupkg extension.

  1. In VS Code press Ctrl+Shift+P or use the View menu and click on Command Palette.
  2. Type Chocolatey: and click Chocolatey: Pack Chocolatey package(s).
  3. Select embedded-zip.nuspec from the list.
  4. In Additional arguments enter --output-directory='C:\tutorials' and press Enter.

Install Your Script Package

You can test your package, and see how it behaves with the following command:

choco install embedded-zip -y --source='tutorials'

Uninstall Your Script Package

You can test the uninstall behavior with the following:

choco uninstall embedded-zip -y

Conclusion

At this point, you should have a working Zip archive package! Congratulations! Hopefully you can apply this to other Zip archives!