You wanted it and now you have it. Microsoft vision of joining forces with Linux and the Open Source community took another huge leap in the right direction today. This announcement has made Power Shell open and available to the community.


 

Here is a snip from the blog posting at Microsoft describing this announcement:

Since its inception in 2002 PowerShell has been deeply influenced and improved by the passion and needs of our community. As an example, 80 contributors filed bugs and issues on the “alpha” release. Since that time we, together, have built a strong PowerShell community that supports each other, provides Summits and Conferences and gives great feedback to the product team at Microsoft.

Satya’s new leadership and customer-focused mindset has encouraged and empowered us to do even more with our community. Last year we started a number of successful community initiatives, such as the PowerShell Home Page, the PowerShell Gallery, and various Open Source projects.

Today we are thrilled to move to the next level and provide PowerShell as an open source project on GitHub, available on Windows, Linux and macOS! The official announcement blog can be found here and the PowerShell Webinar is here. This is the most dramatic change since the release of V1 so of course, we had to record the moment for history, here is the video of the team making the repo public!

Last year we started down this path by contributing to a number of open source projects (e.g. OpenSSH) and open sourcing a number of our own components including DSC resources. We learned that working closely with the community, in the code and with our backlog and issues list, allowed us prioritize and drive the development much more responsively. We’ve always worked with the community but shifting to a fine-grain, tight, feedback loop with the code, energized the team and allowed us to focus on the things that had the most impact for our customers and partners. Now we are going big by making PowerShell itself an open source project and making it available on Mac OS X, Ubuntu, CentOS/RedHat and others in the future.

So, where’s the cool stuff?

You can always go to the PowerShell Home Page for information, updates or links about PowerShell and our overall efforts. However, for those who just want to dive in, here some direct links to help you get going right away:

  • The downloads for the alpha version of PowerShell built in the PowerShell repo that work on: Ubuntu 14.04/16.04, CentOS 7.1, and Mac OS X 10.11.
  • The PowerShell open source project is at https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell.
  • The Readme.MD file in that folder should display immediately. It contains links the downloads and to installation instructions
  • The Contribution Guide gives you the information you need to develop and contribute to the open source project. The FAQ is currently focused on issues for developers who are working to set up their own builds (although this may change over time).
  • The PowerShell channel on Youtube contains a variety of brief demos to showcase the basic abilities.
  • Demos, in code with comments, are available in the PowerShell Repo demo folder.

 

 

Great job Microsoft the community salutes this great effort and keep it coming.

 

Hope you enjoy,

 

Dave