WinGetDotNet

Some easy-to-use WinGet wrapper library for .NET

What it is

It´s a simple and tiny .NET 6 library named WinGetDotNet, wrapping the popular Windows-App WinGet (a tool by Microsoft, used to manage software packages on a Windows machine). WinGetDotNet makes it easy to integrate WinGet into a .NET program.

WinGetDotNet is specifically designed with the KISS principle in mind. It´s sole purpose is just to wrap WinGet application process calls. Nothing else.

By the way: WinGet is imo a fantastic piece of software, to manage all of your Windows applications and keep your Windows software up2date. Fat kudos 👍 to Microsoft here! For more information about WinGet itself, take a look at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/package-manager/winget or use your Google-Fu techniques.

How it works

• WinGetDotNet is released as .NET assembly (.dll). Just download and add it to your existing project.
• WinGetDotNet is released as .NET NuGet package (.nupkg). Just add it to your NuGet package source and use it.
• WinGetDotNet offers a method that asynchronously starts a WinGet process as Task, to await the process.
• WinGetDotNet returns the WinGet console output and exit code, after the awaitable process has finished.
• WinGetDotNet is using the System.Diagnostics.Process class to run WinGet.
• WinGetDotNet is using the TAP pattern, including typical async/await and CancellationToken concepts.
• WinGetDotNet is using a typical CancellationToken timeout pattern.
• WinGetDotNet is developed by using the SOLID principles in a typical manner.

Quick overview

Here are some excerpts, to give a quick overview on how it looks like, for a first impression:

• Property to verify if WinGet is installed:

  bool WinGetIsInstalled { get; }

• Method to run WinGet asynchronous:

  Task<WinGetResult> RunWinGetAsync(string parameters, CancellationToken cancellationToken = default)

• Method to run WinGet asynchronous, with a given timeout:

  Task<WinGetResult> RunWinGetAsync(string parameters, TimeSpan timeout, CancellationToken cancellationToken = default)

• Result model, containing data about how WinGet was called, as well as it´s output and it´s exit code:

  record WinGetResult(string ProcessCall, string ConsoleOutput, int ExitCode);

For more information, just use the IntelliSense tooltips of Visual Studio, or take a look into the source code. It´s really a rather small and simple library and not much more than what you see above. 😉

Requirements

There aren´t any special requirements, besides having WinGet installed on your machine. WinGetDotNet is just a typical .NET assembly, released as assembly DLL and NuGet package. Just download the newest release, from the Releases page, unzip and add it to your project. All the releases are compiled for x64 Windows, assuming you are using some 64-bit Windows (and that's quite likely).

Notes

• WinGetDotNet is under MIT license. Feel free to use the source and do whatever you want. I assume no liability.
• WinGetDotNet is written in C#, is using .NET 6 and is built with Visual Studio 2022.
• To compile the source by your own, you just need some Visual Studio 2022 edition. Nothing else.
• I never compiled it with other tools, like Rider or VS Code. I solely used Visual Studio 2022 Community.
• The release-binaries are compiled as self-contained .NET 6 assemblies, with "x64 Windows" as target.
• Self-contained: That´s the reason why the binary-size may be bigger and why there is no framework dependency.
• GitHub´s default .gitignore excludes Visual Studio 2022 publish-profiles, so i added a screenshot to repo.
• WinGetDotNet offers a Task based approach, but the WinGet app itself can´t run concurrently, without errors.
• So keep above fact in mind, before writing real concurrent code, by using i.e. Task.WhenAll() etc.
• WinGetDotNet just exists, because it started as a sidecar project of my wingetupd tool. 😁

Have fun.