Dynamically install Chocolatey packages with AASC and Azure Artifacts

Managing software on Windows platforms can be quite a burden. Luckily, there are plenty of tools out there that can help out. One of these awesome tools, is Chocolatey. Chocolatey simplifies the installation of software by providing a universal package manager for Windows. If you’re looking for packages, you’ll notice that the community repository contains more than 9000+ packages available for you to be installed by a single command-line. While it’s great to fetch packages from a community repository, it can be difficult in a locked down environment.

In this step-by-step guide, you will set up your private Azure Artifacts repository to publish Chocolatey packages. When those packages have been pushed, you need a mechanism to deploy those packages in a controlled manner. That’s where Azure Automation State Configuration(AASC) comes into play. AASC allows you to upload so called “Configuration files” that states how you want to configure one or more target computers (Nodes in DSC terms).

Prerequisites
Before you get your hands dirty, you’re going to need some pre-requisites to follow along:

• An Azure subscription
• A code editor like Visual Studio (VSCode), or other editors you prefer
• PowerShell 5+ with the Az PowerShell module installed
• An Azure DevOps Services account
• An Azure Storage Account, Azure Automation Account…