Proposal: Add Winget Support for Grafana Alloy on Windows

[rossm-mf]

Background

When automating Grafana Alloy installation on Windows with tools like Ansible, I currently have to script a wget or win_get_url task to download the installer, followed by a separate command to run it silently. This manual process is brittle and requires maintenance for each new release.

The Grafana team provides excellent, officially supported APT packages for Debian-based systems, which makes automated management on Linux seamless. Having official Winget support for Windows would bring similar efficiency and platform parity. It would standardize the installation process, making it easier to manage cross-platform deployments of Alloy and simplifying the experience for all Windows users, especially those leveraging automation.

Proposal

I propose the following actions to add official Winget support:

Create and Submit a Winget Manifest: Publish a manifest for Grafana Alloy to the microsoft/winget-pkgs repository. This can be generated using wingetcreate with the existing Windows installer.

Automate Manifest Updates on Release: Integrate a step into the release CI/CD pipeline to automatically update and submit the Winget manifest for each new Grafana Alloy version. This "fire-and-forget" approach ensures the package is always current without manual intervention.

Implementing Winget support would significantly improve the Windows user experience, especially for automated setups, and align the Windows packaging with the convenience already offered for Linux.