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.

See the Contributing Guidelines for more Git information, such as our installation instructions, contributing rules, and Git best practices.

Download source code

Clone this repository. It is a "superproject" and has a number of other repositories embedded within it as submodules. Please see the contributing guidelines and learn about submodules.

git clone https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell.git
cd PowerShell

Linux

Linux will need every submodule, so update them recursively:

git submodule update --init --recursive

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.

Windows

On Windows, many fewer submodules are needed, so specify them:

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 1.0.0.001888, 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.

This installs the .NET CLI package feed. The benefit to this is that installing dotnet using apt-get will also install all of its dependencies automatically.

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=1.0.0.001675-1

The drawback of using the feed is that it gets out of date. The pinned version is the most recent package published to the feed, but newer packages are available. To upgrade the package, install it by hand. Unfortunately, dpkg does not handle dependency resolution, so it is recommended to first install the older version from the feed, and then upgrade it.

wget https://dotnetcli.blob.core.windows.net/dotnet/beta/Installers/Latest/dotnet-ubuntu-x64.latest.deb
sudo dpkg -i ./dotnet-ubuntu-x64.latest.deb

Additionally, PowerShell on Linux builds a native library, so install the following additional build / debug tools.

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

Windows

Tested on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012 R2.

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dotnet/cli/rel/1.0.0/scripts/obtain/install.ps1 -OutFile install.ps1
./install.ps1 -version 1.0.0.001888
$env:Path += ";$env:LocalAppData\Microsoft\dotnet\cli

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.

Start-PSBuild from module ./PowerShellGitHubDev.psm1 on Windows and Linux / OS X, if you are self-hosting PowerShell.

Specifically:

Linux

In Bash:

cd PowerShell
dotnet restore
./build.sh

Windows

In PowerShell:

cd PowerShell
dotnet restore
Import-Module .\PowerShellGitHubDev.psm1
Start-PSBuild # build CoreCLR version
Start-PSBuild -FullCLR # build FullCLR version

Tip: use Start-PSBuild -Verbose switch to see more information about build process.

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

• launch ./bin/powershell.exe
• run tests with ./bin/powershell.exe -c "Invoke-Pester test/powershell"

Debugging

To enable debugging on Linux, follow the installation instructions for Experimental .NET Core Debugging in VS Code. You will also want to review their detailed instructions.

VS Code will place a .vscode directory in the PowerShell folder. This contains the launch.json file, which you will customize using the instructions below. You will also be prompted to create a tasks.json file.

Currently, debugging supports attaching to a currently running powershell process. Assuming you've created a launch.json file correctly, within the "configuration" section, use the below settings:

"configurations": [
    {
        "name": "powershell",
        "type": "coreclr",
        "request": "attach",
        "processName": "powershell"
    }
]

VS Code will now attach to a running powershell process. Start powershell, then (in VS Code) press F5 to begin the debugger.

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.

PSRP support is not built automatically. See the detailed notes on how to enable it.

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

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

PSRP support is not built by ./build.sh

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

Note that the OMI build steps can be done with ./omibuild.sh.

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

• Install the Visual C++ Compiler via Visual Studio 2015.

This component is required to compile the native powershell.exe host.

This is an optionally installed component, so you may need to run the Visual Studio installer again.

If you don't have any Visual Studio installed, you can use Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition.

Compiling with older versions should work, but we don't test it.

Troubleshooting note: If cmake says that it cannot determine the C and CXX compilers, you either don't have Visual Studio, or you don't have the Visual C++ Compiler component installed.

• Install CMake and add it to PATH.

You can install it from Chocolatey or manually.

choco install cmake.portable

• Install .NET CLI via their documentation

Building

Start-PSBuild -FullCLR

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

• building managed DLLs: dotnet publish --runtime net451
• generating Visual Studio project: cmake -G "$cmakeGenerator"
• building powershell.exe from generated solution: msbuild powershell.sln

All this steps can be run separately from Start-PSBuild, 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