chocolatey / chocolatey/choco

Chocolatey Autouninstall Heuristics Suggestion

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0 - Triaging Bug Enhancement
Dominant language
C#
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Description

Chocolatey autouninstall heuristics do not seem to distinguish whether an install that is run is actually part of it's current sessions activities.

With systems that have their own auto updates, like Microsoft Office 365 or virus protection software or anything with independent updates - it is not possible to ensure that another installer does not run while chocolatey is running.

The larger the scale of the environment, the more likely the possibility of overlap on at least some machines when a chocolatey package is deployed to ALL machines.

Also in [a] large scale, [b] desktop environments it is more common for the user to install something while the management system is also installing.

It would be helpful for larger scale environments for Chocolatey do some analysis in it's heuristics to:
[a] attempt to determine if the creation of any "uninstall" keys was done by a child process of the package.
[b] support specific exclusions like office 365's updater.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by reviewing Chocolatey’s current autouninstall heuristics and how they identify uninstall registry keys and installer processes. Determine whether child-process attribution and configurable exclusions such as Office 365’s updater can be specified, then define tests that cover independent updates, user installs, and package-owned uninstall entries.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
csharp
Domain
tooling
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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