PowerShell on Linux / OS X / Windows

	Ubuntu 14.04	Windows
master

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Obtain the source code

Setup Git

Install Git, the version control system.

sudo apt-get install git

If you do not have a preferred method of authentication, enable the storage credential helper, which will cache your credentials in plaintext on your system, so use a token.

git config --global credential.helper store

See the Contributing Guidelines for more Git information.

Download source code

Clone this repository recursively, as it's the superproject with a number of submodules.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell.git

The src/omi submodule requires your GitHub user to have joined the Microsoft organization. If it fails to check out, Git will bail and not check out further submodules either. Please follow the instructions on the Open Source Hub.

On Windows, many fewer submodules are needed, so don't use clone --recursive.

Instead run:

git clone https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell.git
git submodule update --init --recursive -- src/monad src/windows-build src/Microsoft.PowerShell.Linux.Host/Modules/Pester

Setup build environment

We use the .NET Command Line Interface (dotnet) to build the managed components, and CMake to build the native components (on non-Windows platforms). Install dotnet by following their documentation.

The version of .NET CLI is very important, you want a recent 1.0.0 beta (not 1.0.1). The following instructions will install precisely 1.0.0.001638, though any 1.0.0 version should work.

Previous installations of DNX, dnvm, or older installations of .NET CLI can cause odd failures when running. Please check your version.

Linux

Tested on Ubuntu 14.04.

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] http://apt-mo.trafficmanager.net/repos/dotnet/ trusty main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/dotnetdev.list'
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver apt-mo.trafficmanager.net --recv-keys 417A0893
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install dotnet=1.0.0.001638-1

Then install the following additional build / debug tools:

sudo apt-get install g++ cmake make lldb-3.6 strace

OMI

To develop on the PowerShell Remoting Protocol (PSRP) for Linux, you'll need to be able to compile OMI, which additionally requires:

sudo apt-get install libpam0g-dev libssl-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libboost-filesystem-dev

Windows

Tested on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012 R2.

An MSI installer also exists, but this script avoids touching your system.

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dotnet/cli/rel/1.0.0/scripts/obtain/install.ps1 -OutFile install.ps1
./install.ps1 -version 1.0.0.001638 -channel beta

If you meet Unable to cast COM object of type 'System.__ComObject' to interface type 'Microsoft.Cci.ISymUnmanagedWriter5', please install Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015.

OS X

The OS X dependency installation instructions are not yet documented. You can try their PKG installer, or their obtain script. We do not (yet) routinely test on OS X, but some developers use PowerShell on 10.10 and 10.11.

Building

The command dotnet restore must be done at least once from the top directory to obtain all the necessary .NET packages.

Build with ./build.sh on Linux and OS X, ./build.ps1 for Core PowerShell on Windows, and ./build.FullCLR.ps1 for Full PowerShell on Windows.

Specifically:

Linux

In Bash:

cd PowerShell
dotnet restore
./build.sh

Windows

In PowerShell:

cd PowerShell
dotnet restore
./build.ps1

PowerShellGitHubDev

Alternatively, the PowerShellGitHubDev.psm1 module contains a Start-PSBuild function to build Core PowerShell on both Linux and Windows. This module can be imported into the built-in PowerShell on Windows, and a self-hosting copy of PowerShell can be installed using our packages under the releases tab.

Running

If you encounter any problems, see the known issues, otherwise open a new issue on GitHub.

The local managed host has built-in documentation via --help.

Linux / OS X

• launch local shell with ./bin/powershell
• run tests with ./pester.sh

Windows

• set the module path $env:PsModulePath = "$pwd\bin\Modules"
• launch ./bin/powershell.exe
• run tests with ./bin/powershell.exe -c "Invoke-Pester test/powershell"

PowerShell Remoting Protocol

PSRP communication is tunneled through OMI using the omi-provider.

PSRP has been observed working on OS X, but the changes made to OMI to accomplish this are not even beta-ready and need to be done correctly. They exist on the andschwa-osx branch of the OMI repository.

Building

PSRP support is not built by ./build.sh

Build with ./omibuild.sh.

Running

Some initial setup on Windows is required. Open an administrative command prompt and execute the following:

winrm set winrm/config/Client @{AllowUnencrypted="true"}
winrm set winrm/config/Client @{TrustedHosts="*"}

You can also set the TrustedHosts to include the target's IP address.

Then on Linux, launch omiserver in the debugger (after building with the instructions above):

./psrp.sh
run

The run command is executed inside of LLDB (the debugger) to start the omiserver process.

Now in a PowerShell prompt on Windows (opened after setting the WinRM client configurations):

Enter-PSSession -ComputerName <IP address of Linux machine> -Credential $cred -Authentication basic

The $cred variable can be empty; a credentials prompt will appear, enter any fake credentials you wish as authentication is not yet implemented.

The IP address of the Linux machine can be obtained with:

ip -f inet addr show dev eth0

Desired State Configuration

DSC support is in its infancy.

DSC also uses OMI, so build it first, then build DSC against it. Unfortunately, DSC cannot be configured to look for OMI elsewhere, so for now you need to symlink it to the expected location.

ln -s ../omi/Unix/ omi-1.0.8
./configure --no-rpm --no-dpkg --local
make -j

Detailed Build Script Notes

This sections explains the build scripts.

The variable $BIN is the output directory, bin.

Managed

Builds with dotnet. Publishes all dependencies into the bin directory. Emits its own native host as bin/powershell. Uses a Linux configuration to add a preprocessor definition. The CORECLR definition is added only when targeting the netstandard1.5 framework. The LINUX definition is added only when --configuration Linux is used.

cd src/Microsoft.PowerShell.Linux.Host
dotnet publish --configuration Linux

Native

The libpsl-native.so library consists of native functions that CorePsPlatform.cs P/Invokes.

libpsl-native

Driven by CMake, with its own unit tests using Google Test.

cd src/libpsl-native
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug .
make -j
ctest -V
# Deploy development copy of libpsl-native
cp native/libpsl-native.* $BIN

The output is a .so on Linux and .dylib on OS X. It is unnecessary for Windows.

PSRP

OMI

Build OMI from source in developer mode:

cd src/omi/Unix
./configure --dev
make -j

Provider

The provider uses CMake to build, link, and register with OMI.

cd src/omi-provider
cmake .
make -j

The provider also maintains its own native host library to initialize the CLR, but there are plans to refactor .NET's packaged host as a shared library.

FullCLR PowerShell

On Windows, we also build Full PowerShell for .NET 4.5.1

Setup environment

• You need Visual Studio to compile the native host powershell.exe.

If you don't have any visual studio installed, you can use Visual Studio 2013 Community edition.

• Add msbuild to PATH / create PowerShell alias to it.

Set-Alias msbuild C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe

• Install CMake and add it to PATH.

You can install it from [Chocolatey][] or manually.

choco install cmake.portable

• Install dotnet-cli via their documentation

Building

.\build.FullCLR.ps1

Troubleshooting: the build logic is relatively simple and contains following steps:

• building managed DLLs: dotnet publish --runtime dnx451
• generating Visual Studio project: cmake -G "$cmakeGenerator"
• building powershell.exe from generated solution: msbuild powershell.sln

All this steps can be run separately from .\build.FullCLR.ps1, don't hesitate to experiment.

Running

Running FullCLR version is not as simple as CoreCLR version.

If you just run .\binFull\powershell.exe, you will get a powershell process, but all the interesting DLLs (i.e. System.Management.Automation.dll) would be loaded from the GAC, not your binFull build directory.

@lzybkr wrote a module to deal with it and run side-by-side.

Import-Module .\PowerShellGithubDev.psm1
Start-DevPSGithub -binDir $pwd\binFull

Troubleshooting: default for powershell.exe that we build is x86.

There is a separate execution policy registry key for x86, and it's likely that you didn't bypass enable it. From powershell.exe (x86) run:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass

Running from CI server

We publish an archive with FullCLR bits on every CI build with AppVeyor.

• Download zip package from artifacts tab of the particular build.
• Unblock zip file: right-click in file explorer -> properties -> check 'Unblock' checkbox -> apply
• Extract zip file to $bin directory
• Start-DevPSGithub -binDir $bin