this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2026
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Programming

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Do any of you Windows users leverage CLI tools much? (lemmy.zip)
submitted 3 days ago by treadful@lemmy.zip to c/programming@programming.dev
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I built a service whose primary client is a CLI program. I was thinking about building that client for Windows as well (not just WSL). My target users are generally technically-proficient so I'd rather not build a whole GUI app if it's unnecessary. But I honestly have no idea how often Windows users use CLI tools beyond some Windows admin stuff.

So if Windows is your daily driver, how often do you leverage the shell and how unusual would it be to use CLI tools in your workflows?

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[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The time i was forced to use Windows on the job, i've used chocolatey for system stuff packages and scoop for user-level.
Winget wasn't a thing then and it is literally stolen (tricked) from the appget dev, so i wouldn't like to use it anyway.

I was actually hugely into batch scripting and using a PortableApps thumbdrive, back in my tech school days. Once you get the hang of it, you can create some rather beautiful scripts, similiar to shell scripts. Made a mass-converter with config file include/exclude rules and stuff, among others. Also a pscp wrapper and a cli file-manager utility, looks like.

Then there's this tool wimtweak.exe from some image-modification suite, that lets you uninstall features cleanly, just like a update would. But it's cli is awkward, especially the part to know what there is to uninstall, so i've made a wrapper tool that let's you search the created index. Until i realized that uninstalling some non-critical features breaks Windows Update and you're fighting the system anyway, which is when i moved to Linux 100%.

Btw, two batch scripts every Windows hacker should now: SaveServices.bat and SaveVariables.bat. Name is self-explanatory; to save and easy restore them. I can upload them if anyone wants.