Document PowerShell Modules about azure-pipelines-tasks

[jessehouwing]

I'd love it if we could use (at least some) of these modules in our own scripts. Especially the Find-Files task which would help porting existing MsBuild scripts to powershell.

[chrispat]

You should be able to use them in your own tasks, however, as the modules are currently written they have too many dependencies to be loaded outside of the agent.

From: Jesse Houwing [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2015 2:04 PM
To: Microsoft/vso-agent-tasks [email protected]
Subject: Re: [vso-agent-tasks] Document PowerShell Modules (#352)

I'd love it if we could use (at least some) of these modules in our own scripts. Especially the Find-Files task which would help porting existing MsBuild scripts to powershell.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/352#issuecomment-128093527.

[jessehouwing]

But I can't seem to use them in my own powershell script, as that uses the powershellexe host. It would be very useful if we could use (at least some) of the functions in those type of scripts.

It would also make it a lot easier to test the task.ps1 scripts stand-alone to make them work as expected. Right now creating and debugging tasks by triggering builds is far from ideal.

[bryanmacfarlane]

Agreed! And that's why we're starting an effort to be able to run, test and debug tasks even outside the agent. We've made good progress on the xplat side and we're about to start a new powershell handler in the agent that offers the equivalent on PS side

Here's how we do it on the JS side - coming soon to PS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta2c3sUbJ18

[chrispat]

Yes we know that is an issue and it is something we are working on fixing, I don’t have an ETA yet but there are some other task model things we are working on for the fall.

From: Jesse Houwing [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2015 5:01 PM
To: Microsoft/vso-agent-tasks [email protected]
Cc: Chris Patterson [email protected]
Subject: Re: [vso-agent-tasks] Document PowerShell Modules (#352)

But I can't seem to use them in my own powershell script, as that uses the powershellexe host. It would be very useful if we could use (at least some) of the functions in those type of scripts.

It would also make it a lot easier to test the task.ps1 scripts stand-alone to make them work as expected. Right now creating and debugging tasks by triggering builds is far from ideal.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/352#issuecomment-128147212.

[jessehouwing]

Great news!
On Aug 5, 2015 11:04 PM, "Chris Patterson" [email protected] wrote:

Yes we know that is an issue and it is something we are working on fixing,
I don’t have an ETA yet but there are some other task model things we are
working on for the fall.

From: Jesse Houwing [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2015 5:01 PM
To: Microsoft/vso-agent-tasks [email protected]
Cc: Chris Patterson [email protected]
Subject: Re: [vso-agent-tasks] Document PowerShell Modules (#352)

But I can't seem to use them in my own powershell script, as that uses the
powershellexe host. It would be very useful if we could use (at least some)
of the functions in those type of scripts.

It would also make it a lot easier to test the task.ps1 scripts
stand-alone to make them work as expected. Right now creating and debugging
tasks by triggering builds is far from ideal.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub<
https://github.com/Microsoft/vso-agent-tasks/issues/352#issuecomment-128147212>.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#352 (comment)
.

[DaveSullivanAtWork]

Just watched the video, can't wait for it to be available for PS development too.

[bryanmacfarlane]

closing as we're tracking this work on our backlog

[peder]

@bryanmacfarlane: this item was closed since it was tracked on your backlog, but was there ever an update to this? Any blog post or wiki article we could use as a technical reference?

[ericsciple]

The PowerShell task execution handler still works for back-compat, but has been superceded by the "PowerShell3" task execution handler. The source and docs are here.