Monday, January 4, 2010

I definately recommend the PowerShellPack.

When I first started developing for PowerShell I was using the PowerShell ISE that comes with Windows 7.  Mainly because my version of Sapien PrimalScript doesn't support PowerShell v2 with Intellisense.  So I looked all over for a snazzy IDE that gave me full support for PS 2.  I liked Quest's editor (PowerGUI) the best, but it just doesn't work at present with the AD module from Microsoft (go figure--Quest has their own AD tools, which are very robust).  So I checked out Idera's PowerShellPlus.  It is just a bit much for me.  Don't get me wrong.  PowerShellPlus is really amazing and Dr. Tobias Weltner has a really good book (and it's free) to help learn PowerShell, but the IDE is just too much for me (price wise-at least for now).  Also, Sapien's PrimalScript 2009 is supposed to be very good (I've been using 2007 for all my VBScripting for years now and I really like their IDE).

However, the more I used PowerShell ISE the more I enjoyed developing with it. It has a great interactive environment.  I can try out my commands first in the console window then go on the left pane (where I've located the editor in my environment), and type my code when it finally works. It's so simple, yet so powerful.

But...I want intellisense (so I thought).  Also I'm blogging now, and I want to copy my nice color coded script to my blog.  Well there really isn't a need for intellisense in ISE. Microsft allows the script editor to use tab completion (out-of-the-box).  I love tab completion and behaves just like the PS console.  Once you get used to tab completion intellisense becomes annoying (at least in my case it did).

What about my blogging though. Well that is where the PowerShellPack comes in (finally--maybe I should have titled this blog entry something else).  When you install the pack (get it here) it adds a ton of features to the ISE.  I can now copy my code in colored HTML straight to the clipboard so that I can post it in my blog.  Isn't that great!

That's not all the PowerShellPack does.  It comes with 10 modules that let you do all kinds of things.  I'm playing around with building UIs using the new cmdlets around WPF.  Good stuff.  Head over to the main site.  Check out some videos and have fun.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Cameron,

    The issue with the Active Directory module that you refer to here is fixed in the next version of PowerGUI, which should be available in beta soon.

    Kirk out.

    ReplyDelete