PoshConsole Release Rss Feed

Updated Release: PoshConsole 2.1 (Q2 2011) (May 20, 2011)

Jaykul — Fri, 20 May 2011 07:19:47 GMT

This release is over a year overdue ... so it's hard to even begin to explain all the many changes, but a few big things are worth mentioning:

First: The whole UI has been done in "Metro" style -- I still have some work to do there.
Second: Quake Mode is back: just drag the window against the top of screen. {Use WIN+C to get it back. (or Win+Shift+C if Win+C is taken, etc)}
Third: $Host.PrivateData.Colors works again
Fourth: There's an Add-Hotkey command that sets a global hotkey that works even when the window's not focused -- this lets you execute scriptblocks by hotkey.

Reminders:

You can drag the window by holding Ctrl while clicking anywhere on the window, not just on the top of the window ...
The $Host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor and $Host.UI.RawUI.BackgroundColor control all the colors in the UI ...
Exporting/Importing history affects the arrow-up history as well as Get-History
For every Profile.ps1 script that PowerShell has, PoshConsole also supports Profile_exit.ps1 scripts
The host-specific profile is PoshConsole_profile.ps1 ... which may be in either your profile directory, or the WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\ directory (you can see these as properties on the $profile variable as in PowerShell.exe).

There are several known issues:

Most notably: you're supposed to be able to turn the Metro style off, but that doesn't work yet
The only values that really work well for $Host.Settings.QuakeMode are "None" and "Top"
You can't run interactive console apps (like vim)

Released: PoshConsole 2.1 (Q2 2011) (May 20, 2011)

Fri, 20 May 2011 07:19:47 GMT

You can drag the window by holding Ctrl while clicking anywhere on the window, not just on the top of the window ...
The $Host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor and $Host.UI.RawUI.BackgroundColor control all the colors in the UI ...
Exporting/Importing history affects the arrow-up history as well as Get-History
For every Profile.ps1 script that PowerShell has, PoshConsole also supports Profile_exit.ps1 scripts
The host-specific profile is PoshConsole_profile.ps1 ... which may be in either your profile directory, or the WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\ directory (you can see these as properties on the $profile variable as in PowerShell.exe).

There are several known issues:

Most notably: you're supposed to be able to turn the Metro style off, but that doesn't work yet
The only values that really work well for $Host.Settings.QuakeMode are "None" and "Top"
You can't run interactive console apps (like vim)

Updated Release: PoshConsole 2.0 Beta (Mar 08, 2010)

Jaykul — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:21:52 GMT

With this release, I am refocusing PoshConsole...

NOTE: Updated .Net 3.5 installers below as of 3/10/2010 (old installers were checking for .net 4 even on the .Net 3.5 installer)

It will be a PowerShell 2 host, without support for PowerShell 1.0

I have used some of the new PowerShell 2.0 APIs, and since I no longer have any machines with PowerShell 1.0 on them to do real testing, it's become too expensive (timewise) to support PowerShell 1 -- I'm moving on, I hope you will too. Incidentally, this is the only reason for the bump to "2.0" on the version: I want to make sure that we're very clear that this doesn't support PowerShell 1.

It will focus on WPF, XAML, and on differentiating itself via that graphical platform.

The "PoshWPF" module which has always shipped hidden inside PowerBoots has always had some features with specific support for hosts which support IPSXamlConsole -- but with this release, PoshConsole becomes the official vehicle for future releases of PoshWPF (I will continue to ship the latest version available when I do PowerBoots releases). This will lead to continued improvement of PoshWPF on a more rapid pace, and will make it easier to add enhanced WPF and Xaml support to PoshConsole.

I'm also moving to release .Net 4 -- so I'm taking advantage of the "Go Live" licensing in the VS2010 and .Net 4 release candidates to release binaries built against .Net 4. If you have it available, using that build will get you better performance, better rendering, and enhanced support for Xaml serialization (which isn't actually that great) via a series of -Xaml cmdlets (ConvertTo | ConvertFrom | Export | Import).

It will focus on stability and performance

To this end I temporarily crippled "QuakeMode" (see: Set-QuakeMode) in order to remove some of the problems caused by the "chromeless" window design that was required for that mode. If you want to see that "slide down from the top -- full screen-width" mode get better again, I want to hear from you about it, because I don't really use it myself, and I'm not very inspired to work on it. If it does return, it will most likely return as a command-line switch for PoshConsole or even as a separate executable.

I've fixed and closed over 30 work items in this release, and left only two minor tickets among the ones I originally intended to address ... and I've been using it as my main PowerShell host for a few weeks now -- it feels to me that it's basically stable. There are still some problems with
native applications (particularly the fact that if they are NOT supported, there's no way to kill them), and some pieces of the RawUI that aren't finished (SetBufferContents, etc), but I believe those are only used by a tiny fraction of people a tiny fraction of the time, so you should be good to go as long as you're not using PowerShell to interact with apps like edit.com or vi/emacs in the console ;-) -- PLEASE let me know if you run into any problems.

I'm also releasing x64 binaries and doing NGen in the installers to improve startup performance in particular -- I think you'll notice. If you're bothered by the startup time, you can also disable the startup banner setting to remove that big welcome screen it starts with.

Released: PoshConsole 2.0 Beta (Mar 08, 2010)

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:21:51 GMT

With this release, I am refocusing PoshConsole...

NOTE: Updated .Net 3.5 installers below as of 3/10/2010 (old installers were checking for .net 4 even on the .Net 3.5 installer)

It will be a PowerShell 2 host, without support for PowerShell 1.0

It will focus on WPF, XAML, and on differentiating itself via that graphical platform.

It will focus on stability and performance

Updated Release: PoshConsole 2.0 Beta (Mar 08, 2010)

Jaykul — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:16:10 GMT

With this release, I am refocusing PoshConsole...

It will be a PowerShell 2 host, without support for PowerShell 1.0

It will focus on WPF, XAML, and on differentiating itself via that graphical platform.

It will focus on stability and performance

Released: PoshConsole 2.0 Beta (Mar 08, 2010)

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:16:10 GMT

With this release, I am refocusing PoshConsole...

It will be a PowerShell 2 host, without support for PowerShell 1.0

It will focus on WPF, XAML, and on differentiating itself via that graphical platform.

It will focus on stability and performance

Updated Release: PoshConsole 2.0 Beta (Mar 08, 2010)

Jaykul — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:46:20 GMT

With this release, I am refocusing PoshConsole...

It will be a PowerShell 2 host, without support for PowerShell 1.0

It will focus on WPF, XAML, and on differentiating itself via that graphical platform.

The "PoshWPF" module which has always shipped hidden inside PowerBoots:http://boots.CodePlex.com has always had some features with specific support for hosts which support IPSXamlConsole -- but with this release, PoshConsole becomes the official vehicle for future releases of PoshWPF (I will continue to ship the latest version available when I do PowerBoots releases). This will lead to continued improvement of PoshWPF on a more rapid pace, and will make it easier to add enhanced WPF and Xaml support to PoshConsole.

I'm also moving to release .Net 4 -- so I'm taking advantage of the "Go Live" licensing in the VS2010 and .Net 4 release candidates to release binaries built against .Net 4. If you have it available, using that build will get you better performance, better rendering, and enhanced support for Xaml serialization (which isn't actually that great) via a series of -Xaml cmdlets (ConvertTo | ConvertFrom | Export | Import).

It will focus on stability and performance

Released: PoshConsole 2.0 Beta (Mar 08, 2010)

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:46:20 GMT

With this release, I am refocusing PoshConsole...

It will be a PowerShell 2 host, without support for PowerShell 1.0

It will focus on WPF, XAML, and on differentiating itself via that graphical platform.

It will focus on stability and performance

Updated Release: PoshConsole 2.0 Beta (Mar 08, 2010)

Jaykul — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:38:11 GMT

With this release, I am refocusing PoshConsole...

It will be a PowerShell 2 host, without support for PowerShell 1.0

It will focus on WPF, XAML, and on differentiating itself via that graphical platform.

It will focus on stability and performance

Updated Release: PoshConsole 2.0 Beta (Mar 08, 2010)

Jaykul — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:27:04 GMT

With this release I am officially refocusing PoshConsole.

It will be a PowerShell 2 host, without support for PowerShell 1.0

I have used new PowerShell 2.0 APIs, and since I no longer have any machines with PowerShell 1.0 on them to do real testing, it's become too expensive (timewise) to support PowerShell 1 -- I'm moving on, I hope you will too.

It will focus on WPF, XAML, and on differentiating itself via that graphical platform.

It will focus on stability and performance

Reviewed: Community Preview (Alpha) (Feb 05, 2009)

rhencke — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:30:01 GMT

Rated 1 Stars (out of 5) - Instantly dies on XP SP2 with: Method not found: 'Void System.Management.Automation.Runspaces.Runspace.set_ApartmentState(System.Threading.ApartmentState)'. at PoshConsole.CommandRunner.StartRunspace() at PoshConsole.CommandRunner.ThreadRun() at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(Object state) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, Co

Reviewed: Community Preview (Alpha) (Jan 29, 2009)

chuckmoore55 — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:20:17 GMT

Rated 2 Stars (out of 5) - Installed under WinXP SP2. At invocation, immediately blows up (i.e. encounters a bug) with debug message : "An unhandled exception ("System.MissingMethodException") occurred in PoshConsole.exe [5816]".

Updated Release: Community Preview (Alpha) (Jan 18, 2009)

Jaykul — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:35:30 GMT

You MUST

Try running the "QuakeMode" cmdlet (full name is Get-QuakeMode, but nevermind that) in the console.
Try pressing the focus hotkey: WINC by default (but if you're a quake junky, you can set it to WINOEMTILDE)

Warning

Remember, this is a preview :) There's a known bug with resizing the window if you turn off the Vista aero look on the window (or are not running Vista with aero) -- I wrote some custom window drawing, and broke the resizing for the custom "Expression" looking mode. If you're on XP, you won't really be able to resize the window larger than it starts up, if you're on Vista, just leave the "Native Methods" on (that is, leave it so it looks aero, instead of switching to the gray look).

Released: Community Preview (Alpha) (Jan 18, 2009)

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:35:30 GMT

You MUST

Try running the "QuakeMode" cmdlet (full name is Get-QuakeMode, but nevermind that) in the console.
Try pressing the focus hotkey: WINC by default (but if you're a quake junky, you can set it to WINOEMTILDE)

Warning

Updated Release: Community Preview (Alpha) (Jan 18, 2009)

Jaykul — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:28:24 GMT

Warning

Released: Community Preview (Alpha) (Jan 18, 2009)

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:28:24 GMT

Warning

Updated Release: Community Preview (Alpha) (Jan 18, 2009)

Jaykul — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:27:45 GMT

There's a ton of new stuff in this release ... and I'll write it all up later. (sorry) I needed to get a new release out so people could play with Out-WPF and New-BootsThread (they're in the PoshWpf.dll, add it as a module). This release (probably) only works with the PowerShell 2 CTP ...

http://huddledmasses.org/images/PoshConsole/PoshConsole.png

http://huddledmasses.org/images/PowerBoots/PoshConsole-PowerBootsInline.png

!!Warning

Remember, this is a preview :) There's a known bug with resizing the window if you turn off the Vista aero look on the window (or are not running Vista with aero) -- I wrote some custom window drawing, and broke the resizing for the custom "Expression" looking mode. If you're on XP, you won't really be able to resize the window larger than it starts up, if you're on Vista, just leave the "Native Methods" on (that is, leave it so it looks aero, instead of switching to the gray look).

Updated Release: Community Preview (Alpha) (Jan 18, 2009)

Jaykul — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:19:36 GMT

Created Release: Community Preview (Alpha) (Jan 18, 2009)

Jaykul — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:06:18 GMT

Released: Community Preview (Alpha) (Jan 18, 2009)

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:06:18 GMT