PowerShell Studio 2012/ Project Behavior Strangeness

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Eurisko
Posts: 17
Last visit: Fri Jun 16, 2023 11:06 am

PowerShell Studio 2012/ Project Behavior Strangeness

Post by Eurisko »

I just installed PowerShell Studio 2012 & ChangeVue 2012. Although most things make sense, there are a couple of behaviors I can't seem to understand, and can't find a work around for.

Projects: Export
Almost everything I do is a project of some such and I often have several files in the project that either work together, or stand alone, but are still all part of the project.

Whenver I have a single file open from a project, and I click on the Export tab, I only have the options available under the "Project" section. Rarely would I ever want to export the entire project into one file. I frequently want to export one file from the project however. The Export to File & Export to Clipboard options are both grayed out when working with a single file in a project.
This becomes very problematic for me when I want to just export the one file to another location. I end up copying/pasting into a new document, and it's really a kludge to do, consider it's something I need to do often.

It would be great to be able to export the entire project as individual files (and sign each one).

Projects: Code Signing
Basically similiar problems to above. When I have one file open from a project that I want to sign, I can't. Again, the Sign Script functionality is grayed out, regardless of if I have it checked out, changed, anything. The only way to make use of this function is to manually copy the file out of the project, then reopen it as a single file, sign it. Again, a bit of a kludge for a process I need to do frequently.

Projects Panel overall:
It seems to become dead weight when you are truly working with a single file. If you have a folder of items (in trying to work around the above issues and use a different process) you can't really tell their status in Source Control, and the Projects Panel is empty. Is there anyway it can be used as a Folder/File browser when not a Project panel? Then it could reflect the source control context of the files as well.

Export:
Even when opening a single file not in Source Control, not in a project, the Export to File, and Export to Clipboard are again grayed out under the File section of Export.

Script Signing:
Is there anyway to get support for multiple certficates and be able to choose at the time of signing which certificate to use? I have several certificates depending on if it's going to a public resource, production, internal uat, test, dev, or client machines. With Windows PowerShell ISE, I was able to write functions to faciliate this, but haven't found a method to enable that with PowerShell Studio 2012.

To heavily leverage source control & the project functionality, these couple of items with exporting & code signing are killing me. I'm ready to buy, as I haven't found anything else I like as much. (although I am digging PowerGui). Any suggestions or possible changes/fixes to these items behavior?
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davidc
Posts: 5913
Last visit: Mon Jul 08, 2019 8:55 am
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PowerShell Studio 2012/ Project Behavior Strangeness

Post by davidc »

[Note: Post was moved to Pre-Sales Questions forum]

Projects:

Export is designed for non ps1 files. Files that can’t be reference as is, such as the Form pfs file. The export essentially creates a ps1 file version of the file. I’m assuming you want to make a copy of the script to move it to another location. Is this correct?

As for the Export Project, it performs a similar purpose and combines all the forms and scripts into a single ps1. If you do not want a ps1 file to be merged into the exported script, you can set the project file’s Build to ‘Content’ using the property panel.

Code Signing:

The Sign Script button is only enabled when a ps1 file is active. It is not enabled for files in projects because they are typically merged. We will look into allowing you to sign a file that is marked as content.

In the Ribbon->Options->Powershell Tab, you can specify the certificate for signing as tell it to sign every time you save a script or export a file.

Project Panel:

The original intent of the project was to work with multi-form files. Looks like you wish to use it as a collection of individual scripts. Note: You don’t need a project to use source control. PowerShell Studio supports source control on a folder / file bases.

Export:

Again this is because it’s a ps1 file.

Script Signing:

The IDE only supports a single certificate at once, but you can use the Custom Tool menu to trigger a call to a code signing tool.

See the follow blog for more details on how to customize the menu:

http://www.sapien.com/blog/2013/01/08/p ... ial-oh-my/

We can put in a request for a project type that only houses scripts. Again the original goal of the project was to deal with multiple scripts and GUIs that work together to create a single ‘application’ of sorts.

I hope this helps answer some of your questions.

David
David
SAPIEN Technologies, Inc.
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Eurisko
Posts: 17
Last visit: Fri Jun 16, 2023 11:06 am

PowerShell Studio 2012/ Project Behavior Strangeness

Post by Eurisko »

When working with groups of files then, is there a panel I'm not noticing? Short of browsing explorer to different folders? I looked at that as an option, but there wasn't an easy way to see what I had checked out, what else was in my folder I needed to still check out and look at, unless I switched back to ChangeVue a dozen times. Some of my things I'm working on have large numbers of scripts in them. The project view is slick because I can see each items status, what's checked out, what's not, etc. There doesn't seem to be a Folder view to get the same affect. Am I missing it?

On Certificates, I'll look at building a custom Code Signing tool so I can choose. I have 7 different code signing certificates I have to use depending on where it's going. Constantly reloading the info in the Options panel, wasn't an option. Especially when one change to a script may require I sign it 7 times and send it out. :(

I will work with the Custom Tool functionality to see if I can make some of my own tools for exporting/signing, etc. That will give me a pretty good start.

The big one for me is how Projects currently work. If they could either be able to work as individual files, OR have a "Folder" panel that could be opened in that place instead that listed all the associated files and their Source Control status, that would be wonderful. I guess that's the big one for me, since I can build some work arounds for the other items.

Thanks for your help.
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davidc
Posts: 5913
Last visit: Mon Jul 08, 2019 8:55 am
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PowerShell Studio 2012/ Project Behavior Strangeness

Post by davidc »

Once you enable source control you can add a file to Source control using the menu and the status will be shown in the file's tab.

Ribbon->Options->Source Control

A checkmark for checked out files and a lock for checked in files. You shouldn't have to switch out of the application, since PowerShell Studio will track the status of the file. There is no folder source control view. If you want to keep track of check statuses then the project is the best bet. I will add a file collection project type to the wish list and we will see what we can do.

As for signing using the Custom Tool menu, you could call PowerShell.exe to sign the script for you, but you will need to look up the appropriate script.

David
David
SAPIEN Technologies, Inc.
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