PowerShell

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PowerShell is a cross-platform task automation solution made up of a command-line shell, a scripting language, and a configuration management framework. PowerShell runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Installation

In Gentoo, PowerShell is provided by either the app-shells/pwsh-bin or app-shells/pwsh package. The first one is the official binary package from Microsoft that supports generic Linux systems, the second one is built from source on a given Gentoo system. Both of those packages can be installed simultaneously on the system. The selection between PowerShell versions and flavors ("bin" vs "from-source") on Gentoo systems is managed by the "pwsh" eselect module from the app-eselect/eselect-pwsh package.

There also exists a generic pwsh "provider" package virtual/pwsh that will default to the "bin" package first if it is possible to install it on the current system's architecture.

USE flags

Only the app-shells/pwsh has some USE flags available, that is: "debug" and "gui".

USE flags for app-shells/pwsh Cross-platform automation and configuration tool

`debug`	Enable extra debug codepaths, like asserts and extra output. If you want to get meaningful backtraces see https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Quality_Assurance/Backtraces
`gui`	Enable support for a graphical user interface
`vanilla`	Do not add extra patches which change default behaviour; DO NOT USE THIS ON A GLOBAL SCALE as the severity of the meaning changes drastically

Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2024-12-23 19:50 More information about USE flags

Emerge

Install PowerShell:

root #emerge --ask virtual/pwsh

Usage

Launch PowerShell with:

user $pwsh

You can also launch individual PowerShell versions (installed via Gentoo SLOTs) directly. The following will start official PowerShell of version 7.4:

user $pwsh-bin-7.4

Changing the default version

Using the pwsh eselect module you can switch the default PowerShell versions.

List available versions:

root #eselect pwsh list

Update current implementation:

root #eselect pwsh update

Set current implementation to the 1st item:

root #eselect pwsh set 1

Installing user-local modules

List available modules:

PS />Get-Module -ListAvailable

Install a module under the current user:

PS />Install-Module -Scope CurrentUser PSScriptAnalyzer

Installing system-wide modules

Gentoo provides a convenient way of installing PowerShell modules by just providing them as packages that can be emerged.

root #emerge --ask app-shells/posh-git

Removal

To completely remove all packages related with PowerShell on Gentoo systems the support packages listed in above section have to be uninstalled as well as the main PowerShell provider package.

Unmerge

To remove PowerShell:

root #emerge --ask --depclean --verbose virtual/pwsh

Then, if you installed the binary package:

root #emerge --ask --depclean --verbose app-shells/pwsh-bin

and in case of source-built:

root #emerge --ask --depclean --verbose app-shells/pwsh

A quick one-liner:

root #emerge --deselect app-shells/pwsh app-shells/pwsh-bin virtual/pwsh app-eselect/eselect-pwsh && emerge --ask --depclean