QoL Improvement for winget app installation #3827

bidaumm · 2023-10-28T06:08:42Z

bidaumm
Oct 28, 2023

The suggestion comes from my usage of the ArchLinux Yay - Aur Helper
Yay allows you to search for and install an app in a single command which is such a nice workflow improvement.
For instance, if I want to install ProtonVPN I can do the following process:

> yay install proton
2 aur/protonvpn 1.0.0-3 (+73 6.27) (Out-of-date: 2023-10-10)
    Official ProtonVPN metapackage that installs protonvpn-gui and protonvpn-cli, maintained by the ProtonVPN team.
1 aur/protonup-qt 2.8.2-1 (+43 1.89)
    Install and manage Proton-GE and Luxtorpeda for Steam and Wine-GE for Lutris
==> Packages to install (eg: 1 2 3, 1-3 or ^4)
> 2

Currently when installing apps via winget I have to use winget search followed by winget install and also copy n pasting text from the search command into the install command. 99% of the time I have to do this because I don't know the ID of the app, which can sometimes be different from the application name. Rivatuner is a good example of this:

> winget install rivatuner
No package found matching input criteria.
> winget search rivatuner
Name                        Id          Version Source
-------------------------------------------------------
Rivatuner Statistics Server Guru3D.RTSS 7.3.4   winget
> winget install guru3d.rtss
Found Rivatuner Statistics Server [Guru3D.RTSS] Version 7.3.4

A huge boon would be to allow a configuration which modifies this process to if No package found matching input criteria. is encounter to instead perform the winget search function and then if something is returned provide the list of apps with a reference ID and a input for 'Please select the ID of the package you wish to install'