Automatically Install a List of Software to Windows – Chocolatey Puppet Provider

Install Windows programs just by listing them:

package {["gedit", "firefox", "skype", "vlc"]:}

Puppet can manage Windows slaves. Choco is a limited package manager for Windows. This article shows how to use Choco from Puppet.
Package managers are like calendars. The more you have, the worse off you are. – Me.
Prequisites: command line basics, agent-master puppet, Windows as Puppet Slave
This article is written from memory.
Choco is no apt-get. It’s nice, but if you want a real package manager you should use Linux.

Install puppetlabs/windows Modules

On the Linux Puppetmaster

sudo puppet module install puppetlabs/windows

This installs chocolatey package provider and many other packages for Windows. They are installed into your /etc/puppet/modules/.

Write Module to Install A List of Programs

$ cat gedit/manifests/init.pp
class gedit {
   include chocolatey
   Package {
       ensure => "installed",
       provider => "chocolatey",
   }
   package {["gedit", "googlechrome", "flashplayerplugin", "firefox", "skype", "7zip", "vlc", "sysinternals", "libreoffice", "putty.portable"]:}
}

Add it to site manifest

$ cat puppet/manifests/site.pp

class {gedit:}

Run Puppet Agent on Slave

On Windows slave

puppet agent -tdv

Pay attention to any error messages. On the first time, it takes a while as choco is installed and things are copied around.

Enjoy Automatically Installed Software

After the module has been applied, use start menu to launch VLC and Gedit.

Update: Fxied a typo.