winget bulk upgrade

Verify and install multiple packages from a package list.

About

A PowerShell script that allows the user to install multiple packages using the Windows Package Manager (winget).
The Windows Package Manager is an open source client designed for command-line usage.

Limitations to address

• winget install is unable to read multiple programs as positional arguments
• winget upgrade is unable to selectively upgrade a handful of packages

Solution

This script asynchronously verifies the given package identifiers with a winget show query. If the given packages are valid, it then sequentially installs programs that are not already installed. In the case where a given program is already installed, the script will upgrade it only if a later version exists; otherwise, the upgrade is skipped.

Usage

‼️ Save all your work before running this script. See notes below. ‼️

1. Update 'winget-upgrade.json' with the exact package identifier (case-sensitive), found using winget search.
   For example, winget search --moniker git results in finding 'Git.Git'. Therefore, the json would be as follows.

{
    "programs": [
        "Git.Git"
    ]
}

2. In PowerShell 5.1 (admin) or later, run the following command:

.\winget-upgrade.ps1

Ideas

• Create logger
• Optimize successive runs by remembering recent package ID validations
• Install/upgrade a number of packages in parallel
• Install/upgrade by giving arguments instead of json
• Convert script into module

Notes

• Unfortunately, using winget to install some programs (e.g. Visual Studio, Microsoft Teams, LibreOffice) triggers an automatic system restart. See here to follow the GitHub issue thread. Make sure to SAVE YOUR WORK before running any winget {install,upgrade} commands.