[adsofhoads]

I can't use Chocolately to install zlib or libpng or SDL or libcurl or GMP or really any of the packages that I would never have to think about installing on Linux, because they were pulled as dependencies long ago. The method for obtaining these on Windows is, as best as I have ever been able to tell, to navigate to each of their webpages and look for Windows releases, which you then download and install yourself, a task I find so daunting that I essentially never write or build programs that have any dependencies whatsoever on my Windows box. This situation is obviously ridiculous so I have to conclude I am doing something very, very wrong.

So, Windows programmers, how do get by without a package manager?

[gnoway]

In this example, you probably don't use zlib or libpng or SDL or libcurl or GMP. Your application targets a version of the .NET framework and you use System.IO.Compression, System.Windows.Media.Imaging, DirectX, and whatever the .NET equivalents are for your curl use case and GMP. You might use NuGet to find alternative packages to add to your solution - you are authoring in Visual Studio - for some or all of this. DirectX looks tricky.

Or, if you insist on writing 'unmanaged code,' you are probably finding similar capabilities in native libraries distributed with Windows; it's DirectX's natural environment. Otherwise, you're responsible for doing as you suggest: downloading/compiling the various libraries and stashing them in a nominated area for use by your build toolchain.

Also there's always msys2/mingw64, which does have a package manager (pacman I think?) and you woudl then distribute the necessary runtimes with your program.

[analognoise]

Check out MSYS2.