PowerShell Live Docs

Run real code examples to generate empirical documentation of the complex nonsense that is PowerShell semantics. Deploy the documentation to a static web site.

See https://www.pwsh-live-doc.com/ for the current live site.

Building locally

Use Windows

This code only works on Windows at the moment. We might eventually extend it to Linux and macOS as well.

Install at least PowerShell 7

The build code itself is designed for the newest version of PowerShell. At the moment, that's 7. Some of it may work on older versions, but that hasn't been tested. If there's demand for it to work on older versions, we can look into supporting that :)

You can install the latest version of PowerShell from https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases.

Clone this repository

You can clone it with git clone https://github.com/binyomen/pwsh-live-doc.git or git clone [email protected]:binyomen/pwsh-live-doc.git.

Run downloadPwshPackages.ps1

This will download all release versions of PowerShell that haven't already been downloaded into <clonepath>\pwsh-packages\. Each subdirectory of pwsh-packages will be a self-contained, portable deployment of a specific version of PowerShell.

If you don't want to download all the packages (eating up your time and bandwidth, and rate-limiting you for the GitHub API), you can specify a script block to the downloadPwshPackages.ps1 -ReleaseFilter parameter. The script block will be passed two arguments: a list of all releases available on the repository greater than version 6 (because versions lower than 6 are the 0.x versions which don't have the assets we want) and the current release the filter is running on. Releases are instances of PSCustomObject as specified by the GitHub releases API. If the script block returns true, the release will be included in the downloads.

The script block will have access to all functions in downloadPwshPackages.ps1. You don't want to call most of them, but GetVersionFromRelease is provided so that you can get the version of a given release.

For example, if you only wanted to download version 7.0.0, you could do:

.\downloadPwshPackages.ps1 -ReleaseFilter {
    param($AllReleases, $ReleaseToCheck)
    $v = GetVersionFromRelease($ReleaseToCheck)
    return $v -eq [System.Management.Automation.SemanticVersion]::new(7, 0, 0)
}

Run buildSite.ps1

This will generate the files for the site, using all the PowerShell versions in pwsh-packages. This script outputs the site to the webroot directory.

If you don't want to build the entire site during development, you can specify a script block to the buildSite.ps1 -PageFilter parameter. The script block will be passed two arguments: a list of all example pages that can be built and the current page the filter is running on. Pages are instances of PSCustomObject with type name "Page" as defined in PageHelpers.ps1. If the script block returns true, the page will be generated.

For example, if you only wanted to build the page at "/errors/exit-status-variable-$-question-mark.html", you could do:

.\buildSite.ps1 -PageFilter {
    param($AllPages, $PageToCheck)
    return $PageToCheck.GetLinkPath() -eq '/errors/exit-status-variable-$-question-mark.html'
}

The -PageNames parameter to buildSite.ps1 is shorthand for:

.\buildSite.ps1 -PageFilter {
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory)]
        [PSTypeName('Page')]
        [PSCustomObject[]] $AllPages,

        [Parameter(Mandatory)]
        [PSTypeName('Page')]
        [PSCustomObject] $PageToCheck
    )

    [String] $title = $PageToCheck.GetTitle()
    $PageNames | ForEach-Object `
        { [Boolean] $b = $false } `
        { $b = $b -or ($title -like $_) } `
        { $b }
}

The -TestOnlyMajorVersions parameter to buildSite.ps1 will only run major versions of PowerShell (i.e. 2.0, 5.1, 6.0.0, 7.0.0, etc.). This helps save a lot of time when building locally.

View the site locally

If you ran buildSite.ps1, the webroot directory will now contain the root of the site. Point a static file server like http-server to webroot and view the site from localhost in your browser.

Development

Adding example topics

Each group of examples is stored in a .psm1 file under the example-pages directory. Each file should contain examples for a specific topic. If you want to add a new topic, you should create a new file.

Each file should also export a GetTitle function, which takes no arguments and returns a string title of the page. This is used by docgen to create header elements and links.

It should also export a RunPage function. This also takes no arguments and should return a String[], the HTML lines for the page as generated by the docgen helpers.

Files are organized under top-level directories. Each directory is a different "category", and must contain a category.psm1 file which exports a GetTitle function.

Example page helper functions

Helper functions are available automatically in each page module's RunPage function.

OutputSection

This function takes the heading text and a script block of other commands that should output inside the section. It outputs a <section> element with an associated heading. Sections can be nested, and the heading level is automatically calculated.

OutputText

This function takes a string of markdown code. This markdown is translated into HTML on the page.

OutputCode

This function takes a script block. The script block should not depend on any state outside of it. It will be converted into a string and then run in separate PowerShell processes with <exename> -c $scriptBlockString.

The functions from the util module (e.g. NewErrorRecord) will be available within your script block. You will also be able to write to files in your current directory, since that directory will get deleted after the example finishes.

You can pass the -MinVersion parameter to specify the minimum version the code should run on. This is useful if the example is for a feature that was only introduced in a certain version.

After running the script block against multiple versions of PowerShell, OutputCode generates HTML to display the code block as well as a table of outputs from the PowerShell processes, grouped by PowerShell version.

HTML generation

The entry point for generating the site is the buildSite.ps1 script. This script runs all scripts in example-scripts and uses the output to build the site.

The bulk of site logic generation is in the docgen module.

Downloading PowerShell packages

All the code for the package downloader can be found in downloadPwshPackages.ps1.

Continuous Integration

All continuous integration is performed by GitHub Actions. The configuration files are in .github\workflows\. The workflows test the code, generate the site, and deploy it to Netlify.