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Am I missing something cool by not looking into PowerShell for Linux? Anyone using it could chime in and share how it improves their workflow? What kind of tool

by j1elo 5y ago

Am I missing something cool by not looking into PowerShell for Linux? Anyone using it could chime in and share how it improves their workflow? What kind of tools does it bring to the table?

smackeyacky 5y ago
I use it a bit on windows servers because it integrates well with other microsoft tools. On linux...it seems both redundant and just plain weird for weirds sake. There are literally dozens of alternatives on linux that have a sane syntax and are likely preinstalled.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
If you spend all day immersed in PowerShell on Windows then it might make sense to leverage that familiarity on Linux. Also if you are managing Azure from Linux or macOS.
Kipters 5y ago
I don't use it as a shell on Linux/macOS (I don't think it's even really supported yet), but as a scripting environment it's been ok: the language is sane enough, you can use the .NET BCL if you need to and its behavior is consistent across platforms. We use it for automation in our .NET codebase (which is being developed on both Windows and Linux) instead of bash scripts because of that and the fact it's preinstalled in the .NET SDK Docker images
- brushfoot 5y ago
  It's supported on Linux. It's one of the first packages I install on a fresh box lately.
  - loulouxiv 5y ago
    What do you use it for generally ?
    - brushfoot 5y ago
      My default shell. Everything from manipulating XML to system administration. I'm a big fan of the object-based pipeline. Quick examples: - Accelerators for data and conversion tasks. For example, reading a file with `Get-Content` (or frequently in the shell, the alias `gc`) and parsing and converting into a traversable, queryable XML: `[xml]$myXml = gc my-file.xml`. Then you can go `$myXml.customers.firstName` or use an XPath query. - To get the difference between two dates, `[DateTime]::Now - [DateTime]'2021-01-01'` returns a `TimeSpan` with the elapsed hours, days, etc. It parses the date string for you because of the `[DateTime]` before it. - The cmdlets for system administration. For example, exporting processes that use more than 200 MB of RAM and their image paths to CSV: `Get-Process | where { $_.WorkingSet -gt 200000000 } | select ProcessName, Path | Export-Csv memory-hogs.csv`
Macha 5y ago
Powershell has some interesting ideas about passing around objects rather than just text. The unix way of text streams and tools to manipulate them are too ingrained that I haven't bothered to get in detail, but I hear some people are fans.
torginus 5y ago
Disclaimer: I use PowerShell on Windows, I've never tried it on Linux, but I don't see why its advantages wouldn't transfer. That being said, I think it's main advantages are: - Typed object streams, which gives you stuff like autocomplete, IDE support, and generally there's no need to muck about with sed/awk/xargs - Very fast, it's absolutely fine to read a file line by line, and parse it in a script, whereas doing the same in bash/awk is a ton slower than clever use of cat/grep/wc (and a myriad of other tools) - Due to type information being retained, it's a lot easier to figure out what a given script does, without having to know how the output of a given tool looks like, given it's particular command line switches. This is just my opinion, but PowerShell is a lot more geared toward people like me, who only write a script once in a blue moon/muck about with the build scripts occasionally, while Bash is more geared toward veteran sysadmins who live and breathe this stuff.
- j1elo 5y ago
  Nice summary. It leaves me wonder, though: is the philosophy the same as in Unix world? as in, little independent tools that do one and just one thing. Would those tools also need to be modified to add compatibility with the same typing system that is used by the shell? Or it follows the opposite mentality and the sell comes with batteries included? I'm thinking of some arbitrary example, like downloading a JSON and parsing it to obtain some nested sub-property. In Bash world you would use the shell to execute at least something like `wget` to do the download part, and then run `jq` to parse the JSON and select the desired property. Both of `wget` and `jq` are independent programs, installed separately, with their own input & output channels, that you combine together by using the shell itself. How would this work with PowerShell? (feel free to use some other example that might be better suited)
  - vips7L 5y ago
    In powershell you would use built ins. To download json over rest you would use Invoke-RestMethod or irm. To convert json to objects you would use ConvertFrom-Json. To select properties from objects you would use Select-Object or select. Here is a concrete example that I wrote for the rustlings install script: https://github.com/rust-lang/rustlings/blob/main/install.ps1#L73 https://github.com/rust-lang/rustlings/blob/main/install.ps1... Note that I used Invoke-WebRequest instead of irm here.
yabones 5y ago
Powershell is a pretty neat scripting language, especially if you manage Windows boxes or have lots of .net stuff around. It's not a good interactive shell environment though. The commands are way too verbose and the syntax feels clunky for keying in.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  I disagree. Yes, the syntax is verbose so that you get sensical names instead of things like 'awk' and 'grep', but that isn't a big deal because a) tab complete[0], and b) user-definable aliases. [0] tab complete works on cmdlets, switches, and variables.
  - Arnavion 5y ago
    And if one misses the short incomprehensible aliases, the common commandlets have those by default anyway. `cat` is `gc`, `grep` is `sls`, `ls` is `gci`, ... Same for switches and parameters. You don't have to miss `rm -rf foo/`, it's just `ri -re -fo foo/`
  - JadeNB 5y ago
    > [0] tab complete works on cmdlets, switches, and variables. Isn't this how modern tab complete works everywhere? bash 5.1 (the shell I happen to be running right now, and which I mention because I think of its out-of-box tab completion as pretty basic) tab completes variables.
  - pxc 5y ago
    I don't mind the verbosity at all, but PowerShell in my experience is painfully slow for interactive use, if you want the kind of niceness you can get with Fish, Zsh, or Elvish (fuzzy filtering, smart-case completion, any-order/substring completion, etc.). The module system is also not great for distributing little configure snippets like Oh My Zsh or something, it's clunky and over-complicated for that.
Tijdreiziger 5y ago
I used PowerShell as my main shell for a few years (before WSL existed). My experience is that it's extremely tedious having to relearn every command 'the PowerShell way' if you already know your way around standard Unix commands (and I wasn't exactly a Unix guru either). When WSL dropped I switched and haven't looked back. The only PowerShell tool I did love was posh-git [0]. Thankfully, someone has ported it to bash/zsh as posh-git-sh [1]. [0] https://github.com/dahlbyk/posh-git https://github.com/dahlbyk/posh-git [1] https://github.com/lyze/posh-git-sh https://github.com/lyze/posh-git-sh
e12e 5y ago
I don't think so. Although, there seems to be small trend, especially with golang utilities - to shift from text toward json - or rather a "worst of both worlds" - docker is a prime example of this, eg: docker network inspect webservers -f '{{ range.Containers}}{{.IPv4Address}}{{end}}' Once tools start down this path, I think powershell, or any shell built around primitives that work on tree structures, make more sense (ie: rather than cut, awk, grep-tools for printing named fields etc). Must admit, I am no big fan of ps syntax - too verbose for interactive use - too unfriendly for scripting..

by j1elo 5y ago

Am I missing something cool by not looking into PowerShell for Linux? Anyone using it could chime in and share how it improves their workflow? What kind of tools does it bring to the table?

smackeyacky 5y ago

I use it a bit on windows servers because it integrates well with other microsoft tools. On linux...it seems both redundant and just plain weird for weirds sake. There are literally dozens of alternatives on linux that have a sane syntax and are likely preinstalled.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

If you spend all day immersed in PowerShell on Windows then it might make sense to leverage that familiarity on Linux. Also if you are managing Azure from Linux or macOS.

Kipters 5y ago

I don't use it as a shell on Linux/macOS (I don't think it's even really supported yet), but as a scripting environment it's been ok: the language is sane enough, you can use the .NET BCL if you need to and its behavior is consistent across platforms. We use it for automation in our .NET codebase (which is being developed on both Windows and Linux) instead of bash scripts because of that and the fact it's preinstalled in the .NET SDK Docker images

brushfoot 5y ago
It's supported on Linux. It's one of the first packages I install on a fresh box lately.
- loulouxiv 5y ago
  What do you use it for generally ?
  - brushfoot 5y ago
    My default shell. Everything from manipulating XML to system administration. I'm a big fan of the object-based pipeline. Quick examples: - Accelerators for data and conversion tasks. For example, reading a file with `Get-Content` (or frequently in the shell, the alias `gc`) and parsing and converting into a traversable, queryable XML: `[xml]$myXml = gc my-file.xml`. Then you can go `$myXml.customers.firstName` or use an XPath query. - To get the difference between two dates, `[DateTime]::Now - [DateTime]'2021-01-01'` returns a `TimeSpan` with the elapsed hours, days, etc. It parses the date string for you because of the `[DateTime]` before it. - The cmdlets for system administration. For example, exporting processes that use more than 200 MB of RAM and their image paths to CSV: `Get-Process | where { $_.WorkingSet -gt 200000000 } | select ProcessName, Path | Export-Csv memory-hogs.csv`

Macha 5y ago

Powershell has some interesting ideas about passing around objects rather than just text. The unix way of text streams and tools to manipulate them are too ingrained that I haven't bothered to get in detail, but I hear some people are fans.

torginus 5y ago

Disclaimer: I use PowerShell on Windows, I've never tried it on Linux, but I don't see why its advantages wouldn't transfer. That being said, I think it's main advantages are: - Typed object streams, which gives you stuff like autocomplete, IDE support, and generally there's no need to muck about with sed/awk/xargs - Very fast, it's absolutely fine to read a file line by line, and parse it in a script, whereas doing the same in bash/awk is a ton slower than clever use of cat/grep/wc (and a myriad of other tools) - Due to type information being retained, it's a lot easier to figure out what a given script does, without having to know how the output of a given tool looks like, given it's particular command line switches. This is just my opinion, but PowerShell is a lot more geared toward people like me, who only write a script once in a blue moon/muck about with the build scripts occasionally, while Bash is more geared toward veteran sysadmins who live and breathe this stuff.

j1elo 5y ago
Nice summary. It leaves me wonder, though: is the philosophy the same as in Unix world? as in, little independent tools that do one and just one thing. Would those tools also need to be modified to add compatibility with the same typing system that is used by the shell? Or it follows the opposite mentality and the sell comes with batteries included? I'm thinking of some arbitrary example, like downloading a JSON and parsing it to obtain some nested sub-property. In Bash world you would use the shell to execute at least something like `wget` to do the download part, and then run `jq` to parse the JSON and select the desired property. Both of `wget` and `jq` are independent programs, installed separately, with their own input & output channels, that you combine together by using the shell itself. How would this work with PowerShell? (feel free to use some other example that might be better suited)
- vips7L 5y ago
  In powershell you would use built ins. To download json over rest you would use Invoke-RestMethod or irm. To convert json to objects you would use ConvertFrom-Json. To select properties from objects you would use Select-Object or select. Here is a concrete example that I wrote for the rustlings install script: https://github.com/rust-lang/rustlings/blob/main/install.ps1#L73 https://github.com/rust-lang/rustlings/blob/main/install.ps1... Note that I used Invoke-WebRequest instead of irm here.

yabones 5y ago

Powershell is a pretty neat scripting language, especially if you manage Windows boxes or have lots of .net stuff around. It's not a good interactive shell environment though. The commands are way too verbose and the syntax feels clunky for keying in.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
I disagree. Yes, the syntax is verbose so that you get sensical names instead of things like 'awk' and 'grep', but that isn't a big deal because a) tab complete[0], and b) user-definable aliases. [0] tab complete works on cmdlets, switches, and variables.
- Arnavion 5y ago
  And if one misses the short incomprehensible aliases, the common commandlets have those by default anyway. `cat` is `gc`, `grep` is `sls`, `ls` is `gci`, ... Same for switches and parameters. You don't have to miss `rm -rf foo/`, it's just `ri -re -fo foo/`
- JadeNB 5y ago
  > [0] tab complete works on cmdlets, switches, and variables. Isn't this how modern tab complete works everywhere? bash 5.1 (the shell I happen to be running right now, and which I mention because I think of its out-of-box tab completion as pretty basic) tab completes variables.
- pxc 5y ago
  I don't mind the verbosity at all, but PowerShell in my experience is painfully slow for interactive use, if you want the kind of niceness you can get with Fish, Zsh, or Elvish (fuzzy filtering, smart-case completion, any-order/substring completion, etc.). The module system is also not great for distributing little configure snippets like Oh My Zsh or something, it's clunky and over-complicated for that.

Tijdreiziger 5y ago

I used PowerShell as my main shell for a few years (before WSL existed). My experience is that it's extremely tedious having to relearn every command 'the PowerShell way' if you already know your way around standard Unix commands (and I wasn't exactly a Unix guru either). When WSL dropped I switched and haven't looked back. The only PowerShell tool I did love was posh-git [0]. Thankfully, someone has ported it to bash/zsh as posh-git-sh [1]. [0] https://github.com/dahlbyk/posh-git https://github.com/dahlbyk/posh-git [1] https://github.com/lyze/posh-git-sh https://github.com/lyze/posh-git-sh

e12e 5y ago

I don't think so. Although, there seems to be small trend, especially with golang utilities - to shift from text toward json - or rather a "worst of both worlds" - docker is a prime example of this, eg: docker network inspect webservers -f '{{ range.Containers}}{{.IPv4Address}}{{end}}' Once tools start down this path, I think powershell, or any shell built around primitives that work on tree structures, make more sense (ie: rather than cut, awk, grep-tools for printing named fields etc). Must admit, I am no big fan of ps syntax - too verbose for interactive use - too unfriendly for scripting..