PowerShell is Open Sourced

Thu, 18 Aug 2016 16:05:46 +0000

For those of you that have been at PowerShell Summits over the last few years you’ll have heard Jeffrey Snover state that he wanted to take PowerShell to other platforms.

Now its happened

Jeffrey has announced that an ALPHA release of PowerShell is now available for Linux and Mac. Currently available for Ubuntu, Centos, Red Hat and Mac OS X with more to come

The announcement is at

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/powershell-is-open-sourced-and-is-available-on-linux/

Also see PowerShell blog

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2016/08/18/powershell-on-linux-and-open-source-2/

Some points to note:

ISE isn’t available as part of the alphas release but VSCode is available for Linux and Mac giving an consistent editor across the platforms

PowerShell remoting will be extended to use Open SSH as well as WSMAN

Planned enhancements include:

Additional Linux Distros covered – parity with .NET Core.

Writing Cmdlets in Python and other languages

PSRP over OpenSSH

WSMan based remoting to downlevel versions of Windows and WSMan based PSRP on Linux.

Editor Services and auto-generated GUI

Unix-style wildcard expansion

Increasing test code coverage for Windows and Linux editions

Continue increasing cmdlet coverage for Linux and Windows

REMEMBER this an ALPHA release – there’s still a lot to do and its a open source project so community effort is required

Enjoy

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A date with PowerShell

Thu, 11 Aug 2016 20:42:40 +0000

At the beginning of July, we welcomed our 3rd son into the world. As days past my wife and I would say, “wow, he’s 11 days old. Can you believe it?!”. I’m sure parents out there are relating to this!
This gave me an idea for a fun script that would get your age in years, months and days, tell you how many days until your birthday and your star sign.
I wanted date of birth passed to the function as ‘dd/MM/yy’. To keep to this format, I’m using the ‘ValidatePattern’ Advanced Parameter with a Regular Expression (Regex). The regular expression, “^(0[1-9]|[12]\d|3[01])/(0[1-9]|1[0-2])/(\d{2})$”, will only allow a date in the format of 01/01/16, for example.
Briefly, here is regex syntax I used in some of the expression:
^ Start of string
( .. ) Capturing group
(0[1-9] Match two digits that make up the day. This accepts numbers from 01 to 09
| Acts like a Boolean OR.
/d match any digital character
[12] match any character in the set
/ used to divide the date numbers
{2} Exactly two times
$ End of string
Now that my function parameter variable $Bday has a date, its passed to get-date to be converted from a string to a date. The date in variable $cDate will look like this, ‘01 January 2016 00:00:00’. The next line in the code will use todays date and subtract the date passed in $cDate variable. The $diff variable will contain the following data which we will use to get our age in years, months and days:
Days : 212
Hours : 12
Minutes : 40
Seconds : 20
Milliseconds : 533
Ticks : 183624205335135
TotalDays : 212.528015434184
TotalHours : 5100.67237042042
TotalMinutes : 306040.342225225
TotalSeconds : 18362420.5335135
TotalMilliseconds : 18362420533.5135
I’ve contained this first part in our Begin block. The Process block does the main code.
Now I need to get my age in Years, Months and Days. This is where the [math] data type is used. I’m using the ‘Truncate’ property as I don’t want to do anything fancy like round up my numbers. Adding the .typename of Days to my $diff variable and dividing by $daysInYear variable I can get my age in years.
The next two, months and days required a tweak to the algorithm.
I ended up using a maths term called a ‘Mod’. Now I’m not talking about youth culture and style in the sixties (Mods and rockers anyone ??), but the Modulus Math Operator. Basically the Modulus Operator returns the remainder when the first number is divided by the second. So for example:
1 mod 3 = 1 (or 1 % 3 = 1)
2 mod 3 = 2
3 mod 3 = 0
4 mod 3 = 1
The operator sign used is % for Modulus. Not to be confused for the alias of foreach in PowerShell. For days in a month, I used the average of 30.
I thought it would be fun to add the star sign as well. I was after something that could tell me, “is this date in this date range?”. One of the properties of ‘get-date’ is DayOfYear.
Finding if a number is in a range is pretty straight forward, For example:

5 -in 1..10Which gives a Boolean result.
Now if I convert my date ranges into days of the year then I can match the day of the year I was born against the ranges of days for star signs. I’ve used a switch statement to check against multiple conditions. Within a scriptblock I’ve asked if the value I’m passing is ‘in’ the array of dates for each star sign. The match will return the star sign and is held in the $starSign variable.
The Final part of the process block is to work out how many days until your next birthday. By capturing the current date, formatting the date of birth by removing the year born, adding the current year and finally subtract the amended date of birth against the current date. Phew!
This will leave a number of days until your next birthday. The ‘if’ statement is added if your birthday has already happened at the time of the code, it simply reverses the sum to give a positive number.
The end block displays the three captured results to the host.
I hope you have enjoyed this post and can see the many options possible for dates in PowerShell.
Feel free to download the script from my GitHubhttps://github.com/Gbeer7/Get-Age.git

function Get-age { param( [Parameter(Mandatory=$true, HelpMessage="Date must be written as dd/mm/yy", Position=0)] [ValidatePattern("^(0[1-9]|[12]\d|3[01])/(0[1-9]|1[0-2])/(\d{2})$")] [string]$Bday ) Begin { # use 'get-date' to convert '$Bday' Variable $cDate = (get-date -Date $Bday) # from today's date subtract birth date $diff = (Get-Date).Subtract($cDate) } Process { # Work out Years, months and days [int]$daysInYear = '365' [int]$averageMonth = '30' # years $totalYears = [math]::Truncate( $($diff.Days) / $daysInYear ) $totalMonths = [math]::Truncate( $($diff.Days) % $daysInYear / $averageMonth ) # days $remainingDays = [math]::Truncate( $($diff.Days) % $daysInYear % $averageMonth ) # Your star sign $thisYear = (get-date).Year $starSign = switch ($cDate.DayOfYear) { { $_ -in @( ((get-date 22/12/$thisYear).DayOfYear)..365; 0..((get-date 19/01/$thisYear).DayOfYear) ) } { "Capricorn" } { $_ -in @( ((get-date 20/01/$thisYear).DayOfYear)..((get-date 18/02/$thisYear).DayOfYear) ) } { "Aquarius" } { $_ -in @( ((get-date 19/02/$thisYear).DayOfYear)..((get-date 20/03/$thisYear).DayOfYear) ) } { "Pisces" } { $_ -in @( ((get-date 21/03/$thisYear).DayOfYear)..((get-date 19/04/$thisYear).DayOfYear) ) } { "Aries" } { $_ -in @( ((get-date 20/04/$thisYear).DayOfYear)..((get-date 20/05/$thisYear).DayOfYear) ) } { "Taurus" } { $_ -in @( ((get-date 21/05/$thisYear).DayOfYear)..((get-date 20/06/$thisYear).DayOfYear) ) } { "Gemini" } { $_ -in @( ((get-date 21/06/$thisYear).DayOfYear)..((get-date 22/07/$thisYear).DayOfYear) ) } { "Cancer" } { $_ -in @( ((get-date 23/07/$thisYear).DayOfYear)..((get-date 22/08/$thisYear).DayOfYear) ) } { "Leo" } { $_ -in @( ((get-date 23/08/$thisYear).DayOfYear)..((get-date 22/09/$thisYear).DayOfYear) ) } { "Virgo" } { $_ -in @( ((get-date 23/09/$thisYear).DayOfYear)..((get-date 22/10/$thisYear).DayOfYear) ) } { "Libra" } { $_ -in @( ((get-date 23/10/$thisYear).DayOfYear)..((get-date 21/11/$thisYear).DayOfYear) ) } { "Scorpio" } { $_ -in @( ((get-date 22/10/$thisYear).DayOfYear)..((get-date 21/12/$thisYear).DayOfYear) ) } { "Sagittarius" } } # Work out how many days until birthday $now = [DateTime]::Now $dm = get-date $Bday -UFormat "%m/%d/" $Days = [Datetime]($dm + $now.Year) – $Now # If birthday has happened this year change sum if (!($Days -ge 0)) { $Days = $now - [Datetime]($dm + $now.Year) } } End { # display "nYou are {0} year(s), {1} month(s) and {2} day(s)" -f $totalYears, $totalMonths, $remainingDays “Your Star sign is: " + $starSign # and… if ($cDate.Year -eq (get-date).Year) { “You have another $($daysInYear - $diff.Days) days until your birthday” # If you are under 1 years old } else { “You have another $($Days.days) days until your birthday” # over the age of 1 } } }# Function End `

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What are your "known problems" (solved) in DSC?

Mon, 08 Aug 2016 19:32:02 +0000

I’m collecting a list of known problems in DSC v5 _that have been solved. _Like the infamous “MI RESULT 12” error that could happen if you upgraded from prerelease v5 to production preview. I’m going to document these in “The DSC Book,” including in its free sample version, to help preserve these things in one place.
Again - these need to be solved problems. Just drop as much description as you can into a comment here, and feel free to link to the fix, or to a discussion thread on the problem.
And please - pass this around. If you’ve never had a chance to contribute to “the community” before, now’s a great time. Even if it’s a problem that you know doesn’t exist in the current v5 release, let’s please just document its former existence.
Thanks!

PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit 2017: Call for Topics

Mon, 01 Aug 2016 11:09:22 +0000

The PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit is the number one conference where PowerShell enthusiasts gather and learn from each other in fast-paced, knowledge packed presentations. PowerShell, and DevOps, experts from all over the world including MVP’s, community leaders and PowerShell team members, will once again join together for a few days in Bellevue, WA. to discuss and learn about maximizing PowerShell in the workplace.

It’s also the place to explore and further your knowledge of DevOps principles and practices in a Windows environment. It’s a place to make new connections, learn new techniques, and offer something to your peers and colleagues. If you want to share your PowerShell or DevOps expertise, then this is your official call to submit presentations for selection!

The PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit 2017 will be returning to the Meydenbauer center, Bellevue WA on 9-12 April 2017.

Articles from August 2016 on PowerShell.org - Welcome Automaters!

Ultimate PowerShell Prompt Customization and Git Setup Guide

Here's Another Reason to Contribute

Microsoft did WHAT?

Why "Objects," Remoting, and Consistency are Such a Big Deal in PowerShell

It’s the Objects

Create Custom Monitors with PowerShell

Why PowerShell on Linux is Such an Accomplishment

That .NET Shell Guy

FAQ: PowerShell on Linux/Mac

So does this mean I’ll be able to run [add your favorite module name here] on Linux/Mac?