PowerShell Team

Invoking Scriptblocks from C#

April 25, 2006 Apr 25, 2006 04/25/06

PowerShell Team

Last time somebody asked for an example of a C# method that took a scriptblock.  First of all, there’s one very important thing you have to know about scriptblocks as they are currently implemented.  They can’t be invoked outside of a runspace.  Any attempt to do so will result in an exception.  Some of you may ...

Minding Path Inputs in a Cmdlet

April 25, 2006 Apr 25, 2006 04/25/06

PowerShell Team

When I was a Monad neophyte, I was asked to write a Cmdlet taking a file path as a parameter. A big mistake I made was not keeping in mind that in Monad the FileSystem provider was just one of the many providers. (This makes Monad different from many other shells where you are always in a directory.) For a path-taking Cmdlet, this means two...

Adding help for cmdlets in a MshSnapIn

April 25, 2006 Apr 25, 2006 04/25/06

PowerShell Team

Now that you know how to create an MshSnapIn, you might want to add help content for all those cmdlets that you developed and get them displayed by “get-help” cmdlet.  To add help content you must know how a Monad Cmdlet Help file looks. See any of the *-Help.xml files in Monad installation directory for reference. I wont be ...

Single Shell vs Custom Shell

April 25, 2006 Apr 25, 2006 04/25/06

PowerShell Team

With Monad Beta 3 release, we've introduced the concept of the "single shell". What is a single shell? "One shell to rule them all ... and in the darkness..." (Sorry I can't stop saying that quote everytime I hear "single shell"!) Well rather than having to create a separate executable/shell to host your own cmdlets/providers, you can now ...

Ensuring Script Portability with #requires

April 25, 2006 Apr 25, 2006 04/25/06

PowerShell Team

With the MshSnapIn model in Beta 3, there is no gaurantee that a certain Cmdlet or Provider, apart from those in the default MshSnapIns, is available at any point. There could be a number of reasons. The MshSnapIn may not have been installed. The MshSnapIn could be removed with the remove-mshsnapin Cmdlet ...

Mshsnapin (part 2): developing a mshsnapin.

April 25, 2006 Apr 25, 2006 04/25/06

PowerShell Team

To develop a mshsnapin, you can use following three simple steps, Following is the sample code for a mshsnapin class. Basically, you just need to fill in information about name, vendor and description of the mshsnapin. namespace XYZ.TestNameSpace{    [RunInstaller(true)]    public class ...

Mshsnapin (part 1): usage of mshsnapin commands.

April 25, 2006 Apr 25, 2006 04/25/06

PowerShell Team

Latest beta3 release of monad added the capability of adding/removing cmdlets and providers in current running session through mshsnapins. Mshsnapin is a logic group of cmdlets and providers can be manipulate as a unit in monad engine. Following commands can be used for manipulating mshsnapins, - George [Edit: Monad has...

Using Monad for logon scripts

April 25, 2006 Apr 25, 2006 04/25/06

PowerShell Team

In case you were wondering, yes, you can use Monad for your logon scripts.  You can't just assign a .MSH file as a logon script however, since only file types with file associations work as logon scripts.  Monad installation doesn't create a file association ".MSH -> msh.exe -command %1" for security reasons.  The best way...

Managing non-terminating errors

April 25, 2006 Apr 25, 2006 04/25/06

PowerShell Team

Most errors which occur in your working scripts are likely to be "non-terminating".  This means that Monad just reports the error and the command keeps running.  ("Terminating" errors such as syntax errors will halt the command and, in some cases, the entire script; see http://blogs.msdn.com/monad/archive/2005/11/15/493102.aspx ...

Getting MSDN help urls for .NET BCL types and Members

April 25, 2006 Apr 25, 2006 04/25/06

PowerShell Team

 Often when playing with .Net objects in Monad, I need to use MSDN class library reference to learn how to use a particular type and its members. Now, I have my bookmarks and favorite search engine but I always thought it would be cool if get-member cmdlet could provide me a help link/reference to go to. Thanks to the way ...