How to Write Interdependent Scripts

Scripting Games 2008 Beginners Windows PowerShell Events 3 + 4

The PowerShell Guy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:24:17 GMT

And I almost forgot the beginners events, not much special here : Event 3 d ir c:\scripts\*.txt |% {(get-content

re: How to Write Interdependent Scripts

Dan — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:16:37 GMT

Thanks for writing this. I am trying to understand what you are saying. So first I want to understand the problem you are trying to solve. Is it that you can't run scripts in the current directory without an explicit path?

Shouldn't you have a directory for your scripts? And shouldn't that directory be on the path? Wouldn't that fix this?

re: How to Write Interdependent Scripts

PowerShellTeam — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:53:20 GMT

The problem I am trying to solve is how to write your scripts in a way that they can work well in relative paths. I do have a script directory, but I also have many subdirectories beneath this directory. I do not want each script that I write to be fully self contained, because I will have to write more code and because copying/pasting code will inevitably lead to differences as the code in the original files changes.

re: How to Write Interdependent Scripts

Clint Bergman — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:36:09 GMT

I have been struggling with this as well, and came up with a similar approach. Part of my trouble is that I have multiple subdirectoies beneath my root scripts directory. So I wrote a function that will locate script/binary dependencies and throws terminating errors if it cannot find those specified:

function Get-ResourcePath {

param(

[string]$filename = $(Throw '-filename must be specified!'),

[string]$srchPath = $(Split-Path $MyInvocation.Scriptname),

[int]$srchUp = 0)

$fileNotFound = $true

for ( $i = $srchUp ; $i -gt -1 ; $i-- ) {

$Result = @(Get-ChildItem $srchPath $filename -recurse)

if ($Result[0] -ne $null) {

Write-Host "Necessary resource $filename found at $($Result[0].fullname)"

#Return the full path to the file being searched for.

@($Result)[0].fullname

$fileNotFound = $false

break

}

$srchPath = Split-Path $srchPath

}

if ($fileNotFound) {

Throw "Necessary Resource: $Filename not Found!"

}

For production scripts I have defined the root in the global profile as $PSDAdminscriptroot and root my searches for dependencies there.

I'm always looking to improve the way I search for dependencies, any comments/ideas on my searching script are appreciated.

Thanks for posting your solution, adding aliases is something I'll have to incorporate into our scripts here.

re: How to Write Interdependent Scripts

Jason Archer — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:08:34 GMT

What are the differences between interdependent scripts versus implementing your logic in functions and scripted cmdlets, and then kick starting things with scripts?

re: How to Write Interdependent Scripts

Tin — Fri, 16 May 2008 07:12:57 GMT

Note to self:

See if this have anything to do with "dotting" a script as described in "Windows PowerShell in Action", chapter 7, page 210.

script1.ps1

--------------

function doit($what)

{

write-host "done $what"

}

--------------

script2.ps1

--------------

# call script1 to create the function

(dir function:/).Count

. './script1.ps1'

(dir function:/).Count

#now use it

doit 'whatever'

--------------