Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

MSDN Blog Postings » Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

MSDN Blog Postings » Do you want a PowerShell based build environment? — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 05:58:23 GMT

PingBack from http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com/2008/03/11/do-you-want-a-powershell-based-build-environment/

re: Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

Tomas Restrepo — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 07:03:52 GMT

Thanks for the pointer Jeffrey! I already answered in Nanda's blog, and yes, I do think this is a big deal. For us developers, if we don't have a full build environment, then using powershell all the time doesn't make any sense.

I actually have it already on my profile scripts (I look for 3.5/2008 first and if not found fall back to 2.0/2005, so i can use it on all my machines), and now I can use powershell 100% of the time and not even look back to cmd.exe :)

re: Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

Fred Morrison — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:00:40 GMT

Please replace those SharePoint workflow Post build bat files with ps1's. Build my WSP's with PowerShell, not BAT files. If you prefer to deal only with VS 2008 but not VS 2005 SP1, I'm OK with that.

re: Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

Fred Morrison — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:02:27 GMT

(Follow-on to previous response). Go visit CodePlex and see how many "add-ons" to SharePoint are needed to create a decent development environmnet (even VS 2008!) and you'll get some good ideas how to harness PowerShell for making Visual Studio a better SharePoint custom workflow development environment.

re: Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

Dan Ward — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:25:15 GMT

I really could've used it 1.5 years ago. Since then I've rolled my own PowerShell build process. It's a beauty: a single XML-driven process where a single 'build' can:

- pull source code from multiple, different source repositories and/or external (UNC) locations;

- compile different sections of code using different framework versions (NANT does the compilation work, the script handles the necessary environment variables, library paths, etc.);

- purge files based on regex patterns;

- run on different machine setups (the necessary constants separated in their own XML file);

- logs everything, zips up the package, grabs the appropriate deploy script and drops in it our deploy folder, ready to roll!

Being able to put everything in XML format and read it so easily within PowerShell made it a dream. We're up to 37 separate 'applications' - all our .bat files are gone. Woo-hoo!

Granted, there were some headaches. PowerShell doesn't play well with PSEXEC, which we use for 'remote' (build-machine) builds. I learned more than I want to about stdout issues with PSEXEC, VSS ss.exe, WinZip, etc. and couldn't use *-Transcript for logging as a result, a big bummer. I'm hoping the remote capabilities of PS v2 will help here down the road.

Also, having native access within PowerShell to more services would really help. How about a SQL provider for SQL Server 2005? VSS provider? There are a lot of VSS users out here still, alas.

These nitpicks aside, PowerShell kicks ass and has made my job much, much easier. Great work, Jeffrey!

-Dan

re: Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

Cash Foley — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:48:24 GMT

I attempted to leave a comment on Nanda's blog but I'm not seeing it. My comment is: MSBuild is a comprehensive build engine that is part of the Framework. It's good at what it does. I can't say I love XML for this kind of thing but does have its advantages. Second, what unmet need is being provided by implementing it in PowerShell? I suspect PowerShell CmdLets invoking MSBuild would be nice and all that is really needed

- Cash

re: Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

Cash Foley — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:16:54 GMT

Of course - they need to make a Powershell Task part of the MSBuild Base task lists!

re: Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

Joe — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:43:42 GMT

Yes, it would be nice to use shell-expressions in msbuild

re: Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

Stephen — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:58:50 GMT

most definitely. the more applications built for powershell, the better for powershell users and the .net framework itself.

re: Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

vbNullString — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:41:45 GMT

Yes, I would very much love it. I don't want QA department to manage some of their testing using NUnit. I want them to be able to change scripts instead of compiled application for their testing.

Nanda Lella: Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

Rob Relyea - Xamlified — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:05:39 GMT

Jeffrey Snover (PowerShell Architect) pointed to Nanda's post asking for feedback for the Windows

re: Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

dreeschkind — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 06:36:07 GMT

Make it so!

greetings

dreeschkind

re: Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

pelister — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 12:20:50 GMT

I want rather a Windows Forkflow based Powershell build environment:))

i.e., if we had the possibility to visually insert the ps cmdlets via drag-drop into visual studio's WF builder, that would make script writing a lot easier!

re: Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

vbNullString — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 02:42:37 GMT

I would very much like a framework like Watir for PowerShell along with build environment.

re: Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

Larry Paseornek — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 03:53:43 GMT

Yes! A powershell build environment would be awesome!

re: Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

Dave Hybrid — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:39:30 GMT

Great post, really helped me understand, thanks!

re: Do you want a PowerShell based build environment?

it help — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 02:06:15 GMT

A really well explained article and has given me a nice idea for a project!