Suggest WinGet upgrade when newer manifest schema versions are detected in community repository

[denelon]

Relevant area(s)

WinGet CLI

Description of the new feature / enhancement

When the community repository (winget-pkgs) contains manifests with a newer schema version than the installed version of WinGet fully supports, this is a strong signal that a newer version of WinGet is available. While WinGet does not ignore these manifests, it may not offer the full behavior and features defined by the newer schema version. The user has no way of knowing they are missing out on supported functionality.

WinGet should detect when it encounters manifest schema versions newer than what it fully supports and inform the user that an upgrade to WinGet is likely available. This could be a one-time notification per session, a message during winget upgrade, or a similar low-friction mechanism.

Why this matters:

• Users running older versions of WinGet may not realize they are missing supported functionality from newer manifest schema versions.
• The community repository evolves faster than many users update their tooling — a gentle nudge bridges that gap.
• This improves the overall user experience by making version currency visible without requiring users to manually check.

Considerations:

• The notification should be informative, not blocking — it should not prevent WinGet from completing its current operation.
• Frequency and suppression controls should be considered (e.g., only notify once per day or per session).
• Group Policy should be able to suppress or control this behavior in managed environments.

Proposed technical implementation details

No response

[Trenly]

The notification should be informative, not blocking — it should not prevent WinGet from completing its current operation.

What about cases where the functionality may be important or affect the installation, such as is the case with ArchiveBinariesDependOnPath ? It may be more beneficial to users to have this be a confirmation to proceed / not proceed (with appropriate interactivity level support and settings)

My initial thought when I was considering something similar was to have it be fully blocking requiring an admin setting to allow "undefined" installation behavior when encountering a newer manifest, though I do understand that could break some workflows where WinGet is used in CI/CD pipelines

[Trenly]

• Potentially duplicates Warn if manifest is using a newer schema version #2023