A large number of managed systems require configuration of software that is outside the scope of the built-in Windows roles and features. Chef has a very handy resource for installing arbitrary software onto a Windows host through the windows_package
resource, which behaves somewhat like the Linux-based package resource only for Windows-specific installations. The windows_package
resource is capable of installing software through a variety of popular installation mechanisms. Currently, that list includes the following:
MSI packages
InstallShield
Wise InstallMaster
Inno Setup
Nullsoft Scriptable Install System
If an installer type is not provided in the resource's attributes, then Chef will try to identify the installer by examining the package. For software that does not use one of the supported installation mechanisms, Chef provides the ability to describe a custom installer workflow by providing the custom installation type.