Upgrade an installed App

[denelon]

As a user I want to be able to use winget to install the most current version of a currently installed program so I don't have to go find it.

Experimental Feature
winget upgrade - displays installed packages with an available upgrade.
winget upgrade -? - displays help for the upgrade command.
winget upgrade --all - upgrades all packages with an available upgrade.
winget upgrade <package> - upgrades the specified package.

Note: upgrade depends on list also being enabled.

winget features - displays all experimental features and their status
winget settings - launches settings.json to configure settings like experimental features

Edited: experimental status

[denelon]

If the command is executed without any parameters, it could update "everything" installed by winget.

[jantari]

I would strongly suggest we stick to the verbs familiar from apt:

winget update #Refreshes the repositories
winget upgrade #Actually updates apps

One of the very confusing things about package managers are the different syntaxes they use. I don't
speak for everyone, but I genuinely find pacman, yum and dnf confusing. zypper is ok.

apt is popular and - imo - easy to understand. Introducing update as a command that actually starts updating apps would break muscle memory I believe

[Rican7]

I would strongly suggest we stick to the verbs familiar from apt:

winget update #Refreshes the repositories
winget upgrade #Actually updates apps

Yea, agreed. This is what Homebrew (brew) uses too, so even more prior-art here.

[khobbits]

I think we can probably get away from the requirement to have a command to to 'refresh the repositories'. It feels like a little step backwards in time having to refresh apt, compared to yum. Surely the tool can work out if the repositories require updating automatically?

If we need to operate in a cached/offline mode that shouldn't that extreme edge case require a parameter rather than be the default?

As to which verb, update/upgrade? Why not allow the use of both?

[despotak]

I agree with @khobbits that a "refresh the repos" commands is a backward step. I really hope that winget does not need to manually refresh the repositories before an update.
On the other hand, I see @jantari's and @Rican7's PoV. Probably then the solution is somewhere in the middle. Disregard winget update and use winget upgrade as the default command.

Another solution might be that update is an alias for upgrade (or via versa).

[seanfisher]

Yea, agreed. This is what Homebrew (brew) uses too, so even more prior-art here.

Agree with @khobbits and @despotak and just wanted to pitch in that Homebrew automatically updates when you brew install, brew upgrade or brew tap (see the man page and search for AUTO_UPDATE).

Another solution might be that update is an alias for upgrade (or via versa).

This seems like the best solution to me.

[lordcheeto]

While it may not be the right option for winget, apt separated update and upgrade steps for a reason. Besides not having to update the package list for every operation, it enables it to update the package list on a schedule, run security upgrades automatically, and give notifications in the MOTD when you log in about other packages that can be upgraded, without actually upgrading them.

Chocolatey does this with a separate outdated command.

[bc3tech]

glad to see I'm not the only one praying for the love of God keep the update vs upgrade complexity out of Windows. Chocolatey's been just fine w/o it.

[jaydn]

update / upgrade is there for a reason. Perhaps you just want to check how much is going to be upgraded - or check the package list for anything that looks risky and do it later? Would be a step backward to not be able to do this imo

[0x49D1]

Does winget work kind of chocolatey now? Chocolatey has local repository of installed packages, so that it can update them in case I want to all in 1 batch. But in case I'm upgrading already installed package from it's update system - there will be no problem. For now winget seems very basic, there is no command to see the already installed packages, so I assume that maybe it just downloads the installers and runs them with default parameters... One of the main reasons of package management for me is also security, I've not found any mentions of how package is checked before it's added to the repository of winget.

[sschuberth]

So how about all of these (with upgrade being an alias for update as already suggested):

• winget update to update meta-data and upgrade all packages
• winget update <package> to update meta-data and upgrade only <package>
• winget update --only-meta-data to update meta-data only and upgrade no packages
• winget update --no-meta-data to upgrade all packages based on local (not updated) meta-data
• winget update --no-meta-data <package> to upgrade only <package> based on local (not updated) meta-data

I believe it's also important to be able to list all available updates without actually installing them, but that probably does not require a separate command and can simply be accomplished by a prompt before the actual update / upgrade.