apurin / powershellget-module

Unofficial example of PowerShellGet-friendly package. How to create, publish and use.

powershellget-module

Unofficial example of PowerShellGet-friendly package. How to create, publish and use.

Why PowerShellGet?

It is simple and reliable way to distribute PowerShell cmdlets already available on Windows 10. PowerShellGet takes care of versioning, publishing and installation.

You can use official PowerShell Gallery source or add custom Nuget source.

Manual

This is a detailed manual, but you can jump into a code straight away: check an example of a minimal module in .\MyModule folder and debug Demo.ps1 script to see how:

• Local folder is registered as Nuget source
• Package is published to it
• Package is installed from it
• Cmdlets from package are imported and used
• Full cleanup sequence, which returns everything to initial state

Create

First of all, do not repeat my mistake, do not try to create *.nuspec and pack Nuget package itself manualy, let Publish-Module cmdlet do the job. It adds some magic to Nuget package and without it nothing will work (it adds special Tags to nuspec file).

A module should be placed in a folder named as module. This folder should contain module manifest and a module itself (for example, pure PowerShell module, aka script module).

Here is the expected package structure for module named MyModule:

[ MyModule ]
      MyModule.psd1
      MyModule.psm1

Don’t forget to set MyModule.psm1 as a RootModule inside module manifest.

Publish

First you'll need to add a custom Nuget source. Let’s add some local folder as Nuget feed, so we can easily publish and install from there at any moment:

Register-PSRepository -Name Demo_Nuget_Feed -SourceLocation D:\NugetFeed -PublishLocation D:\NugetFeed -InstallationPolicy Trusted

Now, we can publish our package there:

Publish-Module -Path .\MyModule -Repository Demo_Nuget_Feed -NuGetApiKey 'use real NuGetApiKey for real nuget server here'

As you've probably noticed, we can pass anything as NuGetApiKey for folder Nuget source.

Install and use

This is best part of PowerShellGet:

Install-Module MyModule -Repository Demo_Nuget_Feed -Scope CurrentUser

From now we can use any cmdlet we’ve exported in MyModule.psm1. Once you’ve installed module it stays on system permanently..

Notice -Scope parameter of Install-Module, to install module for all users you'll need admin rights.