GitHub

So as you all probably know GitHub has been acquired by Microsoft. I had initially groaned at this acquisition as usually a lot of things Microsoft has done lately has really bothered me (locking down APIs to O365 and not providing them to on Prem, for example) but then they also have done some good moves… .Net Core 2.0 and all the open source incentives are a nice change of pace.

And to top that with some sugar how about some private Repositories for free members! Yeah That’s right, now that this is an option I’m going to use GitHub more. Now I’ve played with it before, however this time I wanted to write this up for my own memories. Hopefully it helps someone out there too.

Let’s have some fun saving our PowerShell scripts on GitHub!

PowerShell ISE and GIT

Dependencies

So for this demo you’ll need:

1) A GitHub Account (Free)
2) PowerShell ISE (Free with Windows)
3) Git for Windows

First, install and configure Git for Windows. Mike previously covered this topic in another blog article. In this scenario, I ran the Git installer elevated so I could install it in the program files folder and I took the option to add the path for Git to the system environment variable path:

Make sure that you’ve configured Git as the user who is running PowerShell (I ran these commands from within my elevated PowerShell session):

4) Install the Posh-Git PowerShell module from the PowerShell Gallery:

The Fun Stuff

So I originally follow this guys blog post on how to accomplish this.

Now I had already installed git for windows so I was set there.

SharePoint Profiles

I liked the part where he had altered his console display depending on where he was located to not ensue confusion, however I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant by Profiles a lil searching and education session later I was able to verify my profile path:

$profile

Then simply edit that Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1 with Mikes script:

Set-Location -Path $env:SystemDrive\
Clear-Host
$Error.Clear()
Import-Module -Name posh-git -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
if (-not($Error[0])) {
    $DefaultTitle = $Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle
    $GitPromptSettings.BeforeText = '('
    $GitPromptSettings.BeforeForegroundColor = [ConsoleColor]::Cyan
    $GitPromptSettings.AfterText = ')'
    $GitPromptSettings.AfterForegroundColor = [ConsoleColor]::Cyan
    function prompt {
        if (-not(Get-GitDirectory)) {
            $Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle = $DefaultTitle
            "PS $($executionContext.SessionState.Path.CurrentLocation)$('>' * ($nestedPromptLevel + 1)) "
        }
        else {
            $realLASTEXITCODE = $LASTEXITCODE
            Write-Host 'PS ' -ForegroundColor Green -NoNewline
            Write-Host "$($executionContext.SessionState.Path.CurrentLocation) " -ForegroundColor Yellow -NoNewline
            Write-VcsStatus
            $LASTEXITCODE = $realLASTEXITCODE
            return "`n$('$' * ($nestedPromptLevel + 1)) "
        }
    }
}
else {
    Write-Warning -Message 'Unable to load the Posh-Git PowerShell Module'
}

Now that we’ll have the same special console to avoid confusion let’s link a directory!

Linking GitHub Repo to Your local Directory

Then I cloned my new private Repo:

git clone https://github.com/Zewwy/Remove-SPFeature Remove-SPFeature -q

That felt awesome…

Nice, nice…

Opening scripts from the ISE

Alright. Well now that we have a repo, and are in it, how do I open a file in the very ISE we are running to edit them? Now Mike didn’t exactly cover this, cause I suppose to him this was already common knowledge… well not to me haha so it’s actually pretty simple once you know how.

psEdit .\Remove-SPFeature.ps1

Woah! Epic, it can be bothersome when dealing with length scripts, so ensure you utilize regions (w/ endregions) to allow for quick named areas to access, as you can use this command in ISE to collapse all regions once a script is loaded.

$psISE.CurrentFile.Editor.ToggleOutliningExpansion()

lets start making some changes *changes made*

Committing and Pushing

Get your mind out of the gutter!

Now I had originally did a git push, and instantly got everything is up-to-date alert, so awesome, I did not have to fight through his whole schpeal about auth (I got a prompt the very first time I attempted to clone my repo, requesting me to login into my GitHub Account). So my tokens were good right from the start after that happened. However I did make some updates to one file and was now instead presented with this after a commit:

Again a bit of searching I was able to find the answer, seem usually to be some form of ignorance, that is why I’m doing this.. to learn 😛

Now again I got a bit confused at how this worked and when I did some searching I discovered:

Don’t do a “git commit -a” from the ISE, it’ll crash asking you for a line to provide in for the description.

Do proper staged commits as described here. 🙂

I hope this maybe gets some more people power shelling!

Next I should learn to use Visual Studio for more app building… but I’m more of a sys admin then a dev…

I recently took a course in resiliency, and they basically said be a tree… ok.

Branching

Whats is branching? well pretty much, try stuff without changing the source code. Backups anyone? it’s a nice way to try stuff without breaking the original code, and once tested, can be merged.

unlike a tree it’s not often a branch just becomes the trunk, but whatever…

Following this guide:

To create a branch locally

You can create a branch locally as long as you have a cloned version of the repo.

From your terminal window, list the branches on your repository.

$ git branch 
* master

This output indicates there is a single branch, the master and the asterisk indicates it is currently active.

Create a new feature branch in the repository

$ git branch <feature_branch>

Switch to the feature branch to work on it.

$ git checkout <feature_branch>

You can list the branches again with the git branch command.

Commit the change to the feature branch:

$ git add . 
$ git commit -m "adding a change from the feature branch"

Results:

Hopefully tomorrow I can cover merging. 🙂

Cheers for now!