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A Journey to the PowerShell Citadel ✨🧙

··788 words·4 mins·
PowerShell resources
Table of Contents

The Journey Begins Now Young Novice #

In this section you find the most basic stuff. It’s aimed to help beginners who just got in touch with PowerShell. All external links refer to the latest production ready PowerShell version. This is currently the version 7.2.1 LTS. If you’re force to use PSSnapins you still have to use the version 5.1.

Docs #

  • Official Documentation - Microsoft recently moved all the PowerShell documentation to docs.microsoft.com.
  • PowerShell Reference - If you need details about a specific function or cmdlets you can find it there. The Reference is grouped by the built in modules. You can expand each group and select the individual help page of each function.
  • About Pages - The docs does not only contain a reference of all the built in functions. It also contains the so called About pages. These pages explain specific concepts and language related topics. You can find them in a separate about section of the Microsoft.PowerShell.Core module reference. The titles always starts with _about__ and the specific name.
  • The Monad Manifesto - The Monad Manifesto is the original Jeffrey Snover-authored document that results in the Windows PowerShell we know today.
NOTE: You can also display the _about_ pages with a PowerShell function itself. To get a list of all about pages just use Get-Help about_\*. All you need to to is pick a topic name and use the function again like this: Get-Help about_Functions.

Start using PowerShell #

You can’t learn PowerShell like every other language if you don’t use it. So try to solve basic tasks with PowerShell. Google around or ask questions in communities like:

  • StackOverflow - The bes QA platform out there for finding solutions and help for specific topics or questions. Don’t post general or vague questions.
  • PowerShell.org - A very helpful and friendly community.

Acolyte #

Once you got familiar with the basic concepts start discovering advanced techniques like Functions, Modules, Classes, Types, Extended Type System, PowerShell Remoting, Jobs, Package Management.

It’s all about the style #

As soon as you managed to spell PowerShell please respect the PowerShell Best Practices and Style Guide. Unfortunately there is no standard like PEP8 in Python, but this is the most respected and active one. Trust me - it’s maintained by all the experts out there. Just read it, understand it, adopt it and use whatever you can.

IMPORTANT: There is nothing worse than reading an ugly piece of code. And yes, ugly code works as well but it’s impossible to read, understand, review, maintain and makes no fun!

Important Modules #

  • PSScriptAnalyzer - Static code checker for PowerShell modules and scripts.
  • Pester - Test and mock framework
  • platyPS - Write PowerShell External Help in Markdown.
  • Plaster - Plaster is a template-based file and project generator written in PowerShell.
  • psake - A build automation tool.

Tools #

In this phase you should also start working with additional tools like:

NOTE: If you develop open source projects I recommend using Github in combination with its Actions feature or Drone. You don’t need to maintain any additional infrastructure and they are free for public repositories. Otherwise I like working with Gitea as Git Server and project coordination. If you take this path you definitely need a build server Drone. I definitely recommend running these as container in a Docker or even Kubernetes environment.

Maester #

Now you mastered the core concepts, know advanced stuff like PowerShell Remoting, Desired Sate Configuration and important additional modules. Now it’s important to keep up to date and network. Get input from others and spread the work of PowerShell while teaching others!

Grand Maester Blogs #

  • dille.name - An awesome DevOps Engineer and Docker Captain with outstanding Microsoft and PowerShell knowledge.
  • DonJones.com - If you never heard about DonJones I can’t help you. He is one of the biggest maesters in the PowerShell citadel and a great inspiration.
  • PowerShellExplained - A great blog about various PowerShell topics by Kevin Marquette.
  • keithhill.wordpress.com - One of the 4 maintainers of the PowerShell Extension for VS Code.
  • xainey.github.io - Michael Willis blog contains great articles about PowerShell classes, module creation and building frontend for PowerShell. It’s high quality content and easy to follow expert topics.

Get in touch with the Archmaesters #

Take a look at the PowerShell Slack Team if your searching other active PowerShell experts.

Additional Resources #

  • Writing Modules- Resources for writing PowerShell Modules. from Writing PowerShell Modules: Tips, Tools, and Best Practices session at the 2017 PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit
  • Awesome PowerShell - A curated list of delightful PowerShell packages and resources.
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