Creating a custom Winget Repo

Winget is an excellent tool, but in some organizations you may not want to use the community repo (although all apps are checked), or you may want to host your own internal apps, but deploy and update via Winget.

One option is to simply use a custom manifest which I have covered here

The more comprehensive solution though is to host your own repo and fortunately the Winget team have released a PowerShell script to do the hard work for you.

NOTE: You need PowerShell 7!

NOTE 2: The keyvault has purge protection enabled the name you picked can only be used again if you wait 90 days after deletion!

To make things even easier, I’ve scripted it for you so you can either follow the instructions below, or just run the script and answer the prompts. You can find the script here:

https://github.com/andrew-s-taylor/public/blob/main/Powershell%20Scripts/AZ/setup-winget-repo.ps1

Or on PS Gallery

Install-Script -Name setup-winget-repo

Manually Installing

Step one is to download the PowerShell source (WinGet.RestSource-Winget.PowerShell.Source.zip) from here:

https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli-restsource/releases

Extract to a folder (pick an easy path to save time later)

After extracting you need to unlock all of the files with this command:

Get-ChildItem -Path FILEPATH-HERE -Recurse | Unblock-File

We now need to install the AZ module as everything here is going into Azure

if (Get-Module -ListAvailable -Name Az) {
    Write-Host "AZ Module Already Installed"
} 
else {
    try {
        Install-Module -Name Az -Scope CurrentUser -Repository PSGallery -Force 
        Write-Host "Az"
    }
    catch [Exception] {
        $_.message 
    }
}

One installed, connect to Azure with your tenant and optionally subscription (if you have a multi-subscription model)

Connect-AzAccount -Tenant TENANTID
Set-AzContext -SubscriptionId SUBSCRIPTIONID

Next, import the module we downloaded and unlocked:

Import-Module -Name FILEPATH\WinGet.RestSource-Winget.PowerShell.Source\Microsoft.WinGet.Source.psd1

Now for the creation itself, you have a few variables available here for location, naming and type so to make things easier, we’ll set those first:

$resourcegroup = "YOUR_RG_GROUP"
$region = "selected region name (short name)
$wingetitemname = "Prefix for all items created, has to be unique"
$installtype = "Basic, Enhanced or Demo"

The Resource Group will be created if it doesn’t exist already. The name also has to be exclusive as it creates a webapp.

The region will pair and I noticed when selecting UKSouth that it then failed as there wasn’t any capacity in UKWest, something worth considering.

Now run the command to create:

new-wingetsource -Name $wingetitemname -ResourceGroup $resourcegroup -Region $region -ImplementationPerformance $installtype -ShowConnectionInstructions

I had some issues here where the webapp failed so manually ran that step.

First, set the rest source path which is in the downloaded folder

$Restsourcepath = "FILELOCATION\WinGet.RestSource-Winget.PowerShell.Source\WinGet.RestSource-Winget.PowerShell.Source\Library\RestAPI\WinGet.RestSource.Functions.zip"

$webapp = Publish-AzWebApp -ArchivePath $RestSourcePath -ResourceGroupName $resourcegroup -Name $wingetitemname -Force

We then want to grab the URL and output with “/api” at the end which is what you need for Winget

$webappurl = (get-azwebapp -Name $wingetitemname).HostNames[0]

write-host "Your Winget Repo is available at https://$webappurl/api"

Finally add it in Winget:

winget source add -n "My Repo" -t "Microsoft.Rest" -a "URL HERE"

You can of course find out more at the official GitHub repo here:

https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli-restsource