How to Set Up a New Windows Dev Machine in 30 Minutes

A new Windows machine is a clean slate — which usually means an afternoon of downloading installers, clicking Next, unchecking bundled toolbars, and manually fixing PATH. It does not have to work that way.

This guide sets up a full development environment using Glue, a Scoop-compatible package manager written in Go. The steps work the same whether the machine is a fresh laptop, a wiped drive, or a cloud VM you spin up on demand.

What you will have at the end

• A package manager on PATH — glue — managing everything in %USERPROFILE%\.glue
• Your toolkit installed user-space: git, Node.js, Python, and any other CLI tools you need
• One command to update every package later: glue update *
• A repeatable setup you can save as a script and run on the next machine

Step 1, Install Glue (2 minutes)

Open PowerShell (a normal user window — no administrator rights needed) and run:

irm https://gluestick.sh/install.ps1 | iex

The script detects your CPU architecture (amd64 or ARM64) automatically, downloads glue.exe and its shim, installs the 7-Zip and MinGit dependencies it needs, and adds %USERPROFILE%\.glue to your user PATH. Open a new terminal window afterwards so the updated PATH takes effect.

Windows SmartScreen may warn on first run because the installer is not signed with an expensive commercial certificate. Click "More info" → "Run anyway". Glue is MIT-licensed and its source is on GitHub.

Verify the install:

glue --version
glue list

Step 2, Add the buckets you need (2 minutes)

Glue is fully compatible with the Scoop ecosystem: same buckets, same JSON manifests, same CLI verbs. The main bucket (core CLI tools and runtimes) is included by default. Most developers also want extras:

glue bucket add extras

To discover what is available, browse the package index or search from the terminal:

glue search nodejs

Step 3, Batch-install your toolkit (10–15 minutes)

Install everything in one command. A solid starter set for web and general development:

glue install git nodejs-lts python ripgrep fd fzf bat

Each package installs in parallel and lands in its own versioned folder under %USERPROFILE%\.glue\apps\<name>\<version>. Add or remove whatever fits your stack — browse the package index to see what is available across the buckets.

A few more that earn their keep quickly:

• glue install 7zip — archive handling on the command line
• glue install jq — parse JSON in shell pipelines
• glue install lazygit — a terminal UI for git

Verify your toolkit works in a fresh terminal:

git --version
node --version
python --version

Step 4, No PATH configuration needed

This is the part that usually takes the longest with manual installs — and it is already done. Glue puts every installed command on PATH through small native shim binaries in .glue\shims, so tools are callable from any terminal the moment they finish installing. No environment-variable dialogs, no reboots.

Everything Glue manages lives under one root, which keeps the system clean:

%USERPROFILE%\.glue
├── apps\<name>\<version>   # each installed package
├── bin                     # package binaries
├── shims                   # PATH-facing shim executables
└── ...

Uninstalling is equally clean: glue uninstall <name> removes the package and its shims without leaving registry leftovers or shared-file conflicts.

Step 5, Keep everything updated (one command)

Weeks later, when you want the latest versions:

glue update *

Update a single package with glue update <name>. If a project pins a specific runtime — say the Node.js version your team uses — you can lock it so glue update * skips it, and unlock it the same way when you are ready to move on.

Glue also makes updates cheap: files are stored by hash in a content-addressable store and installed via hardlinks, so re-downloading or re-copying identical files is avoided. Reinstalling a version you had before is nearly instant.

Prefer a GUI? Gluestick Desktop

If browsing and clicking beats typing commands, Gluestick Desktop is a graphical front end on the same Glue engine and the same package store — search buckets, install, update, and remove packages without opening a terminal. Everything you installed from the CLI shows up there, and vice versa.

Never set up a machine twice: sync and snapshots

Two things make the 30-minute setup even shorter next time:

• Save your setup as a script. Because everything is a command, your entire environment is one reproducible PowerShell file: the install one-liner, a glue bucket add line per bucket, and a glue install line with your package list. Keep it in a dotfiles repo and a new machine is one paste away from ready.
• Sync across devices with Desktop Pro. Gluestick Desktop Pro can back up your environment as a snapshot — buckets and installed packages — and restore it on your other machine, so the toolkit follows you instead of being rebuilt by hand.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need administrator rights for any of this?

No. Glue installs everything under your own profile (%USERPROFILE%\.glue) and only modifies your user PATH. That is the same user-space model Scoop popularized — nothing writes to Program Files or the machine-wide environment.

How is this different from plain Scoop?

Glue uses the same buckets and manifests but a different engine: parallel HTTP downloads with resume instead of a single connection, and a content-addressable store with hardlink installs instead of repeated extraction. It keeps its own root at %USERPROFILE%\.glue, so you can run it next to an existing Scoop install.

Windows flagged the installer. Is it safe?

The installer is not signed with a commercial code-signing certificate, so SmartScreen shows a warning on first run. Click "More info" → "Run anyway". The CLI is MIT-licensed with source on GitHub, and nothing leaves your machine.

How do I remove everything later?

Uninstall packages with glue uninstall <name>. To remove Glue itself, run glue --uninstall (which also undoes the PATH changes), then delete the .glue folder if you want the disk space back. No registry debris is left behind.

Wrap-up

The full setup is five commands:

irm https://gluestick.sh/install.ps1 | iex
glue bucket add extras
glue install git nodejs-lts python ripgrep fd fzf bat
glue search <tool>   # discover anything else
glue update *        # stay current later

Save those lines in your dotfiles and your next dev machine stops being a project — it is a paste.