Just now starting to implement a command line interface utilizing the new System.Commandline package and using the approach of the SCL example project. Which I really like, thanks for that. The client more or less maps the console input to gRPC messages and should provide an interactive service interface utilizing the duplex capabilities gRPC brings. Since I do all the work implementing the gRPC interface for the console I would like to have a non interactive option beeing able to provide an option to automate all these commands within a script. I spend quite a while researching for options like pipe the stdin/out, C# REPL, determining if keyboard is available, overwriting IConsole, dotnet script CLI and finally writing cmdlets. To be honest I am not really happy with these options and I am wondering if I may missed something with System.Commandline? The requirement is simple: to provide a (typed) output/input to realize command chains within a script running in an MS Windows environment.
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Is there an equivalent to Powershell make? The equivalent of make/rake/cake/py-make, even Gulp...etc? I primarily desire a task runner for build automation. I want to be able to select and compose tasks like I can in Gulp.
Ideally, the solution would be native to Powershell. There are very tight security restrictions on software installations for the project. The power of Google has failed me.
nothing built-in, but there are different solutions like psake or invoke-build. maybe something else.
You can also use VScode for that, you can define tasks (basically run scripts or something) and run them on save or on check out, etc
we have application that needs to simply copy somefiles from source to destination and manipulate config files based on the environment. We use Jenkins for deployment. Since i am comfortable with C# i thought of writing simple console application (.exe ) and invoke that exe on post-deployment by passing some command line argument. and i think this would work.
But i see people are recommending power-shell for deployment. and i have used PS for other projects for deployment.
i just wanted to know what powershell can do that windows console application cannot do?
Since PowerShell could be wholly embedded (not really the right term but it works for this explanation) in C# , there's nothing you could do in PowerShell that couldn't also be achieved in C#.
You can also embed C# in PowerShell, but for various reasons you don't get exactly the same scope of functionality that you can with an .exe.
The point of using PowerShell has to do with the context of it being part of a deployment step.
A PowerShell command or script is more easily changed. A build process is not required.
Its contents are more readily visible and readable to someone who wants to understand the process.
The code written will (likely) be less verbose, further making it easier to understand, and for deployment steps it may be much more straightforward to do those steps in PowerShell (a single cmdlet may do what would be several (dozen) lines in C#).
I've been using powershell script to automate some tasks on production servers. However, it reaches its limitation when I try to do something about async and parallel processing, etc.
Is F# script a good to replace powershell script? (Guess it will be more cumbersome when access file system and other other OS objects, which is very easy in Powershell). The servers don't have visual studio installed. Is it OK just copy fsi.exe to the server to run the fsx files?
A use case,
Download big zip files from a slow FTP server
Unzip the files
Execute an executable files to process the unzipped files
each steps take a while so I want to do something like the following which is hard to do it in powershell
//Limit download 3 files at the same time maximum.
async {
let! zip = GetFromFTP ...
let! file = Unzip zip
do! ... //Run exe to parse file
}
You may find FAKE even more useful that just fsi.exe. It automates builds, but it is just an .fsx file with different targets that could be run from a command line.
F# script is not a good choice to replace powershell altogether - as you mentioned, F# is a much lower-level language, so you will need to write a ton more code to do basic system automation stuff. F# also isn't as well-integrated with other Windows server technologies, so that will be another uphill battle. If you really want to go that route, you should install the F# 3.1.2 bundle on your server, that will deploy the FSharp.Core runtime and fsc/fsi.
Since both powershell and F# are based on .NET, another option is to write your more algorithmic, computationally intensive code in F# as a DLL, then simply load that into powershell. You can even write Powershell cmdlets directly in F#. I've used this approach successfully in the past.
If your specific question is related to parallel/async execution of code, powershell background jobs might be relevant.
Edit: On the topic of powershell/F# interoperability, the Powershell Type Provider might also be worth investigating.
F# could certainly be an interesting choice for writing automation code on servers, but you'll end up writing a lot of basic cmdlets first. Yes, F# could be a good choice in time, but you'll most likely struggle in the beginning. Don't expect to take a 20-line power shell script and get a 20-line F# script. The point, where you'll have a real advantage with F# is more likely to be at close to 1000 lines of powershell code, i.e. when you actually write programs in it.
Powershell is not a very good language, but it comes with much more built-in than F#. That is, I bet what V.B. was talking about with respect to FAKE. FAKE comes with a lot of built-in things as well, but nowhere near as much as powershell.
So if your goal is to write a few cp, mv and rm or anything with pre-existing cmdlets, you'll be disappointed with F#. But if you are writing more complex processing, where the cmdlets are only input / output, you might be happy with F# in the long run.
I am working on a project where we need to repeat certain steps with powershell to deploy stuff. i would like to create a process/install guidance (steps supported with UI) with WIX but after the msi has finished i have an entry in programs and features. I just need it to execute the powershell and the end without registering in windows. i might be using the wrong tooling or whatever, any suggestions are welcome.
Definitely not recommended unless you want to track the deployment of these scripts on different systems by checking the entries in ARP (Add/Remove Programs), and even then it clogs up the Add/Remove view of your computers. Most system administrators hate this approach, it is better to just write to your own registry key and read it back from every machine.
What are the scripts doing? Are you actually installing files.
I inherited some release scripts that prepare and deploy a PHP webapp to around 20 servers. The scripts are written in shell and I personally find them somewhat cumbersome to maintain. That may have have to do with the way they are written but I'm looking to see if anyone has opinion or experience to corroborate the idea that I might seek to do it in a more robust language. It's common to have release scripts written in shell, but does it seem like it lends itself to clunkiness compared to using a language that's more easily read and has better error handling facilities? This scripts seek to:
run unittests, report success or failure
gather and 'compile' javascript and css
upload static content to a CDN
check out code and transfer it to multiple machines
bounce remote webservers
clean up old directories on webservers
schedule cron jobs on remote machines
Send dynamic summary emails to report success or issues
Is it just me or is this kind of involved to write and maintain in shell? I haven't really played with PHP as a command interpreter but I'm thinking of doing it in PHP to match the language of the project. Anyone have any caveats, recommendations or alternatives?
i will think of python