How do I downgrade a Chocolatey package?

Question

I have virtualbox 4.3.28 installed. I'd like to downgrade to virtualbox 4.3.26 Is it possible to downgrade without uninstalling/reinstalling?

Salvucci

Answer 1

In most cases you will likely want to perform an uninstall and then an install.

> choco uninstall virtualbox
> choco install virtualbox --version 4.3.26

In almost all cases, the question is not whether Chocolatey will support it, but whether the underlying software supports a downgrade. With respect to MSIs, they don't always support downgrades (it's configurable by the author). For other installers like NSIS, InstallShield, or InnoSetup, it may not support it at all. So it's best to usually follow the practice of uninstall/reinstall to run into the least amount of issues.

If you know what you are doing and know the underlying software will support it you can try to force an install to a lower version:

> choco install virtualbox --version 4.3.26 --force

You may also need to pass --allow-downgrade as part of the options for forcing the install of a lower version.

Salvucci

You're probably right, but I bet it depends on the quality of the install script and if the package is an MSI or not (and even then, how well that MSI is constructed). – Metempsychosis

How do I see the available versions? – Veer

$choco list packagename --all, @Dr_Zaszuś – Loquacity

Unable to uninstall 'python3 3.8.2' because 'python 3.8.2' depends on it. – Killion

As of Chocolatey v2, the correct syntax to find all versions of a package is choco search <packagename> --all – Agnusago