PowerShell Tools for Visual Studio 2013

PowerShell Tools for Visual Studio – PowerShell editing and debugging in Visual Studio.   

 GitHub | @adamdriscoll

Requirements

• Visual Studio 2013
• PowerShell v3 or later
  • Already Installed on Windows 8+ and Server 2012
  • Windows Management Framework for other versions

Overview

PowerShell Tools for Visual Studio brings the richness of the Visual Studio development experience together with the power of PowerShell.  Using this extension you can:

• Edit, run and debug PowerShell scripts locally and remotely using the Visual Studio debugger
• Create projects for PowerShell scripts and modules
• Leverage Visual Studio’s locals, watch, call stack for your scripts and modules
• Use the PowerShell interactive REPL window to execute PowerShell scripts and command right from Visual Studio
• Automated Testing support using Pester

What’s new in v3.0.299

• Bug fixes

What’s new in v3.0.292

• Snippet Support
• F1 Help Support
• Pester test item template
• Fixed colorization of nested strings
• Fixing an issue with execution policy that would cause IntelliSense, attaching to process and debugging to fail.

What’s new in v3.0.235

• $Profile Support
• PowerShell Command Explorer Tool Window
• Breakpoint Validation
• Improved logging

What’s new in v3.0.177

• Remote process attaching (v5 required)
• Bug fixes

What’s new in v3.0.134

Bug fixes. Refer to GitHub for a full list of issues that have been resolved. 

What’s new in v3.0.108

X64 Support

You can now execute 64-bit functionality such as DSC, Workflows and other 64-bit modules (e.g. SharePoint).

Remote Session Support

Remote sessions are now supported. You can connect to a remote session from within your scripts or the PowerShell Interactive window using Enter-PSSession. You can also start a remote session in the Interactive Window by clicking the  icon. Remote debugging is also supported on machines running PowerShell v4 or later.

New Look and Feel

New icons! Default syntax highlighting colors match the PowerShell ISE! New organized project properties dialog!

Improved IntelliSense & Autocomplete

The document editor and interactive window now fully support IntelliSense and AutoComplete.

Visual Studio 2015 RC and Windows 10 Support

Fully supported on the newest version of Visual Studio and Windows.

Performance Improvements

Improved the performance of the editing experience and IntelliSense. 

Details

An improved editing experience offers syntax highlighting, IntelliSense and code folding. You can quickly navigate your scripts with a function selection drop down.

A rich debugging experience allows you to execute and single step through local and remote scripts. With support for breakpoints, the locals window and the call stack window you can easily find and fix bugs in your scripts.

Support for running utilizing features such as DSC, Workflows and 64-bit modules (e.g. Sharepoint).

The PowerShell Interactive Window provides instant execution with IntelliSense and remote session support.

A project system is available to organize scripts and easily integrate with source control systems. It also offers a mechanism to provide module information for use in MSBuild scripts.

Test adapter support for discovering and running Pester tests.

Feedback

If you have any feedback on the tools leave it here or at GitHub. 

Revision History

1.0.0

• Tab invokes IntelliSense in REPL
• Option to disable multiline REPL window
• Adding Module Project Template
• Added nicer icons
• Test runner outputs to console
• Fixed Debug Arguments
• Various other fixes

0.8.5

• REPL Window Fixes
• IntelliSense Fixes

0.8.0

• REPL Window

0.7.1

• PSate Unit Test Adapter
• Script Argument Support

0.7.0

• Pester Unit Test Adapter
• Actual Dark Theme Support
• Data Tip Support
• Read-Host Support

0.6.4

• Fixed syntax highlighting for PSM1 and PSD1 files
• Added syntax highlighting support for the diff window 

0.6.3

• Fixed a bug where the tokenizer would run over non-PowerShell source files
• Fixed a conflict with the VSColorOutput extension

0.6.2

• Fixed a bug where block comments would not be highlighted correctly
• Fixed a bug where commenting\uncommenting or copy and pasting would result in loss of highlighting
• Added error tagging support for syntax errors (red squiggles)
• Added output pane classification for Debug and Verbose messages
• Added a Execute Selection command
• Added canonical names for commands so they can be bound to keyboard shortcuts
• Added syntax highlighting for tokens in strings
• Added support for the VS Dark theme