[PSS2014] Wishlist

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davidc
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Re: [PSS2014] Wishlist

Post by davidc »

Expect to see the multiline description and the single alias attribute for the next service release. Some of the other requests may take a bit longer to implement.

David
David
SAPIEN Technologies, Inc.
Bosparan
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Re: [PSS2014] Wishlist

Post by Bosparan »

Hi David,

thanks for the swift implementation, appreciate it :) .
And again I shall add to the list, however, those are not about the function builder (really, I'm very content with the current version, and if templates arrive it'll be even greater):

Deployment Settings:
The deployment settings for a project are a bit restrictive, in that they only allow a single target folder and only copy operations. Now, the feature itself is great - used it for some of my minor projects - however I think it can be improved upon. How about turning it into a list of actions to be taken when deploying. Then the user can add actions (Like "Copy file X to Y" or "Copy assembled package to Z" or "Build Package" (or choose which building set to build, if my request for multiple package building sets is coming)).

This would not only allow more flexibility in deploying projects, but also allow you to implement new action types with less effort, since you wouldn't have to modify the existing UI (Lets assume you define a standard string representation for an action, which the GUI uses to display the action).

Just a thought (one that's probably going a bit beyond the scope of that feature): If you make this action system modular with a standard interface you could publish the specifications and allow us to define our own actions ...

Snippet Management: Adding Snippet source
Currently we have two snippet roots: Preset and User.
Would it be possible to add additional Snippet Roots? (And template roots, when those come for the function builder - there, I still got half a wish for the fb after all ;) )
As it currently is, we need to deploy finished snippets to each tech. This requires managing permissions and version-states across multiple machines. Messing up may leave a tech with an older version and it requires quite a bit of infrastructure to automate and support managing the snippets. If it were possible to simply add an additional Snippet-Root on a network share this would allow easy sharing internally. If - even better - it were possible to automatically do a one-way sync of a network share in the box, it would even work when techs are completely out of the company net or simply don't have connectivity at the moment.

Finally, there's another purpose this would serve: Currently there's a clear division between:
- User Snippets
- Official Sapien Snippets
Which made it easier to run PSS in a multi-user scenario like a Terminal Server. However, if there were a third section ...
- Company
... or more for different purposes it would clearly separate between these two and the official corporate snippets (and we wouldn't have to mess with the Sapien Snippet folders when synchronizing our official Snippets, as we do now). Oh, and the techs can't simply change the snippets as they currently can. Not saying they mess with company policies, but if they improve their snippet locally, they are not reporting it in so the others do not benefit from the improvement.

Cheers,
Bosparan

Ps.:
When it comes to "How important is this feature to you?", both of these score way below the function builder templates for me. We found somewhat reasonable workarounds for them, the FB templates however would make a real change, where the current workaround - Snippets as it happens - is more than a little clumsy.
Bosparan
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Re: [PSS2014] Wishlist

Post by Bosparan »

Another note on the function builder ... :)

Assign multiple ParameterSets to same Parameter
This may be going a bit far on the effort-to-outcome scale, but ... it is possible to assign multiple parametersets to a single Parameter, even though the function builder can't do that.
Here an example on how that would look in powershell (as an excerpt from a parameter block):
PowerShell Code
Double-click the code block to select all.
[Parameter(Position = 3)]
[Parameter(ParameterSetName = "File")]
[Parameter(ParameterSetName = "Symlink")]
[Parameter(ParameterSetName = "Hardlink")]
[Alias('name')]
[string]
$ShortcutName = ""
Now, this is less of an actual feature request than a comment on an ability not recreated. The thing is, in practical development I usually find myself rarely creating ParameterSets during initial Function development (they usually keep adding up afterwards, as I develop the dastardly thing) and it is even more rare that I actually plan to assign multiple ParameterSets to a single parameter before finishing with the function-builder. Actually, I just had this happen to me the second time right now (which is why I remembered to write it down).
Soo ...
little impact, easy to do manually. Just thought I'd mention it for the heck of it ;)

Cheers,
Bosparan
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davidc
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Re: [PSS2014] Wishlist

Post by davidc »

Deployment Settings

You might want to refer to the following blog:

http://www.sapien.com/blog/2014/04/21/f ... 14-part-4/

You can always define your own commands such as copy files in the deploy stage.

Snippet Manager:
You can specify an additional path in:

Options->Panels->Snippet Browser->Custom Directory

You can point this path to network drive and share the snippets among a group.

Assigning Multiple ParameterSets is on our To Do list.

Thank you,

David

PS. Keep an eye on the blog next week.
David
SAPIEN Technologies, Inc.
Bosparan
Posts: 290
Last visit: Fri Oct 08, 2021 11:59 am

Re: [PSS2014] Wishlist

Post by Bosparan »

Hi David,

Deployment Actions
thanks for pointing out the deployment-commands. In retrospect, I find it hard to believe I didn't notice that. Must have stopped reading after the first panel with additional files somehow *grml*
Neat article btw, especially the part about the psbuild.exe utility.

Soo, I dug in on that and came up with some upgrade wishes:
- When deploying projects and you choose to deploy the script files somewhere, actually copy the script files there (as of now in 4.1.60 - will update to 4.1.61 momentarily - it will only copy the .psproj file.
- Allow executing a deployment operation without copy action, only the custom commands.
- In Additional Deployment Commands: Interpret .ps1 files as a command to launch Powershell.exe with that file as parameter.

Snippets
Same for the snippet manager options: I obviously failed to search properly, though that one was a bit better 'hidden' ;)
By the way, by now I'd built a workaround for the snippet situation that worked quite well (and works a lot better with the custom path): Setting up Junctions to the target folders. I published the tools for that workaround on the Technet Gallery, so in case you want to peek at it, here's the link.

I'll certainly keep an eye on your blog for that announced post (whatever it may be on).

Thanks for the advice and sorry for those two misshaps - I really should have done a better research there.

Cheers,
Bosparan
Bosparan
Posts: 290
Last visit: Fri Oct 08, 2021 11:59 am

Re: [PSS2014] Wishlist

Post by Bosparan »

Hi David,

been reading that blog post you mentioned, and it's awesome!
Thank you. Since I had some trouble with following the guide I did some search in the options section and stumbled into an unnoticed switch you set there (don't know in which version, might have missed it earlier). Thanks for implementing my request to allow choosing to have CBH inside the function :)

That said, I have (of course) some improvement requests :)

Applying CBH templates to the function builder
I'd love it even more if I could choose the template that's applied in the function builder. Maybe a ComboBox in the UI that remembers the last choice I made? That would save another step for me.

The template assigned to the Function Builder
The template you use when CBHing a function built with the function builder is not the one claimed in the blog. I edited that one in a hope to hard-implement at least for this version my feature request in the previous paragraph. It didn't affect the CBH generated by the Function Builder. I tried rebooting too.

On a related note, you may want to note in the blog post, that you only get the Template choice, when right-klicking on the first line of the function (Example: "function Get-Test") and choosing "Generate Comment Based Help". That took me some time finding.

Cheers and again: thanks,
Bosparan
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