Much like the saying It takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community to raise a programming language. Without passionate people in that community, the word won’t spread and a language can die. Yesterday, I talked about some of the cool community resources and sites. Today, I want to salute those who are working on community projects with PowerShell. These are just a few of the many out there.
StudioShell, by Jim Christopher (@beefarino)
http://studioshell.codeplex.com/
StudioShell is an integrated PowerShell host available inside Visual Studio 2010 and 2008. This tool exposes Visual Studio’s extensibility points and makes it easier to extend your Visual Studio from the command line rather than from compiled binaries. Jim will be giving a presentation on his StudioShell project and using it to extend Visual Studio at CodeStock 2011 down in Knoxville, TN this June.
MongoDB PowerShell Provider, by Jim Christopher
http://mosh.codeplex.com/
If you’re in an environment where you need to manage a Mongo database, then the MongoDB PowerShell Provider may make your life a little easier in managing the database from within PowerShell. This project is nicely documented both on the CodePlex site and from within PowerShell.
PowerShell Script Provider, by Oisin Grehan (@oising)
http://psprovider.codeplex.com/
While developers who can think out a provider’s logic may be more comfortable with writing the provider in C#, this provider allows IT Pros and those comfortable with PowerShell to write their providers in the PowerShell scripting language. Oisin Grehan, PowerShell MVP and PowerShell provider guru, is the guy behind this project. It’s great to see the option of writing providers in PowerShell, as working with the scripting technology directly in its own language makes more sense to many scripters.
Show-UI: The PowerShell WPF Toolkit
Show-UI
For those who have our book, disregard the recommendations on page 397 on the two things to help with WPF apps in PowerShell, as WPK and PowerBoots are merging. Show-UI is the project that they are merging into. Yes, you can use PowerShell to create GUIs. Show-UI is a project that can help make that process even easier in PowerShell. Shoutouts to the coordinators and developers – Jaykul, Doug Finke, and James Brundage.
Others?
Got any other PowerShell projects that you want to share? Leave me a comment!
