How to refresh the environment of a PowerShell session after a Chocolatey install without needing to open a new session

You have a bootstrapping problem:

• refreshenv (an alias for Update-SessionEnvironment) is generally the right command to use to update the current session with environment-variable changes after a choco install ... command.

• However, immediately after installing Chocolatey itself, refreshenv / Update-SessionEnvironment themselves are only available in future PowerShell sessions, because loading these commands happens via code added to profile $PROFILE, based on environment variable $env:ChocolateyInstall.

That said, you should be able to emulate what Chocolatey does when $PROFILE is sourced in future sessions in order to be able to use refreshenv / Update-SessionEnvironment right away, immediately after installing Chocolatey:

iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

choco install -y git

# Make `refreshenv` available right away, by defining the $env:ChocolateyInstall
# variable and importing the Chocolatey profile module.
# Note: Using `. $PROFILE` instead *may* work, but isn't guaranteed to.
$env:ChocolateyInstall = Convert-Path "$((Get-Command choco).Path)\..\.."   
Import-Module "$env:ChocolateyInstall\helpers\chocolateyProfile.psm1"

# refreshenv is now an alias for Update-SessionEnvironment
# (rather than invoking refreshenv.cmd, the *batch file* for use with cmd.exe)
# This should make git.exe accessible via the refreshed $env:PATH, so that it
# can be called by name only.
refreshenv

# Verify that git can be called.
git --version

^{Note: The original solution used . $PROFILE instead of Import-Module ... to load the Chocolatey profile, relying on Chocolatey to have updated $PROFILE already at that point. However, ferventcoder points out that this updating of $PROFILE doesn’t always happen, so it cannot be relied upon.}