Oct 18

Written by: cadams
10/18/2007 1:48 PM 

Hello there to everyone. I hope everyone forgives the bit of nervousness but it's been sometime since I've had a blog or one as public as this. First off I suppose it'd be proper to introduce myself to you all. I work as a QA Engineer, writing test cases, test documentation, test automation, etc. I'm one of the lucky few (or poor sod) that makes certain software does what it should. Or ideally, it doesn't do what it shouldn't.

I'll be writing about several things I will be writing about many things. Most of which I mention in my blog description. I'll be blogging about: Writing Cmdlets in C#, Pipeline/Runtime, Writing Scripts/Functions, Quality Assurance specific interests (automation, reporting, messaging, etc). In addition to anything I may come across during my general explorations and meddling that I find of interest or blogworthy while using PowerShell.

I want to thank Don Jones who gave me my blog account. Thank you Don! I hope to be a helpful contributer to our growing happy PowerShell community and family. I also want to thank Eric Rachner a long time friend of mine since my HS days who's regular pestering me to start a PowerShell related blog was the original inspiration for this blog.

So a little bit about myself, I've been in the tech industry since 1997. I'm a geek by nature even down to my perenial RPG playing. I have been in QA since my first job and continue to be involved in various QA areas to this day. I have a love for QA and hope to champion QA; which I feel has something of a beleagured relationship with other disciplines among most companies in the tech industry. I originally cut my teeth doing *nix related job and other assorted geekery. One of the things I enjoyed (and continue to this day) is the very robust and mature shell environment on *nix system. One of the biggest areas of dissatisfaction on Windows systems was the rather poor and altogether crappy shell or shell environment. It was a fantastic day when one day cruising the Channel9 site I came across a video that discussed a new prototype shell called "Monad" at the time. I watched the video and was in love. I grabbed the Beta the instance it was publically available and have been using it ever since, through the RC period till the day it shipped 1.0. It became a favorite of mine and after a bit of time I moved onto writing Cmdlets to better suit my own specific needs. I hope to actually start my own company writing and selling various Cmdlets I've written. I'll do my best to keep my entrepeneural blogging to a minimum. I'll have plenty of blog-worthy fodder to post as I debug or develop various Cmdlets for my fledgling software company. All the better to entertain you with instead of the banal dross and minutae of starting up and running your own company.

I originally heard about this community site from the PowerScripting Podcast group on Facebook. Which is a great podcast that I recommend. I also recommend the PowerShell group on Facebook as well. Both are nice groups; albeit a little on the quiet side. I suppose we're all just bashful and shy. I hope in time the groups and this site will grow to be indespensible resources for our growing community. If any of you would like to; feel free to give me a poke, message or friend request on Facebook.

So to start off my first blog post I'm going to talk about doing some tweaks within Visual Studio which folks may find helpful and a few other helpful hints. First things first; do yourself a favor and snag the PowerShell template from Channel9. The biggest advantage that this template provides is the creating the PSSnapIn.cs file. Inside this file it creates the PSSnapIn class for your Cmdlet; it will helpfully pre-populate various strings. These are the strings displayed when you run the Get-PSSnapIn Cmdlet. It will create the Vendor/Description strings (or resources for those that have localization needs); the description string being the one primarily of interest. It also will create a generic AssemblyInfo.cs file which will have the versioning, company information, etc. Pretty usual stuff to be honest.

I usually name my projects in the format of: 'Cmdlet-[Verb][Noun]' for easy recognition. I'd actually like to modify this template, mostly a minor change having do with a persnickity naming detail. However the big change I would like to make with the template would be (and my suggestion to you; take note):

• Add a post-build event command line similar to: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0\Bin\installutil.exe" "[path]\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\[solution Cmdlet-[Verb][Noun]]\[project Cmdlet-[Verb][Noun]]\bin\Debug\Cmdlet-[Verb][Noun].dll"

• Debug Settings:
  • Start External Program similar too: C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe
  • (persnickity naming detail is here actually) Start Options: Command Line Arguments: -noexit -command Add-PSSnapIn [cmdlet name]PSSnapIn

I should spend sometime and release a modified template that includes those changes (and a fix for my
persnickity naming annoyance). However those post-build steps and the debug settings should prove to be very helpful when your working out any kinks with any Cmdlet your developing. One day when I am bored, lacking anything else to do or when the annoyance has gotten too much to endure I'll do some reading on how to make a project template and what Visual Studio variables I can use to have The One True PowerShell Cmdlet Template.

One other tool I would really recommend people to use is: Cmdlet Help Editor. This tool can be useful for anyone who has a Cmdlet that is going to be used by someone other than them. Also for doing helpful things like hammering out trivial details like having a functional '-?' operand for your Cmdlet. This tool should be bloody well required for any tech writer working on a PowerShell project. If a suitable editor doesn't exist for Visual Studio 2008 I will be sad. I should check and see if PrimalScript 2007 has a comparable feature. That's one thing that I've found while writing my own Cmdlets. Having solid documentation and help features shows the degree of polish and professionalism one puts into ones work.

It's the little things that matter.

Well I hope folks find that first entry useful and if you have any questions or anything plese feel free to shoot me a message or reply. I hope to follow-up with other useful things which people may find useful and helpful in the future. I hope to have things much smoother and more polished as I get back into blogging more regularly.