axodotdev / axodotdev/cargo-dist

[powershell] investigate ancient chocolatey wizard magic to impl "source HKCU"

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help wanted question
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Description

Windows has a Better and Worse story for updating PATH:

* Better: you can just modify `HKCU:\Environment\Path` and every windows shell should respect that
* Worse: there is no equivalent to `source ~/.profile` to refresh the current shell (and even opening a new tab in Windows Terminal is insufficient, only opening a new Window will force a reread of HKCU.

Someone told me that chocolatey (at least at some point?) had some dark wizard magic to potentially refresh the local shell's env:

https://github.com/chocolatey-archive/chocolatey/blob/master/src/redirects/RefreshEnv.cmd

If this worked, and especially if it could be done automatically by the powershell installer, this would make windows basically a perfect UX.

I'm suspicious of it but it's worth investigating more deeply.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by reviewing Chocolatey's linked RefreshEnv.cmd and the PowerShell installer behavior in cargo-dist. Determine whether the environment can be refreshed in the current shell, whether the approach works reliably, and whether automatic use by the installer is feasible; document the result and any constraints.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
powershell
Domain
cli, release
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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