PowerShell for Linux

Getting started

These instructions assume Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, the same as our dependency, CoreCLR. Fortunately you do not have to build CoreCLR, as we bundle the dependencies in submodules.

Obtain the source code

Install source control tools

• Git, the version control system
• Node.js, to run the Visual Studio Online mshttps Git remote helper
• smbclient, to obtain mshttps
• ntpdate, to update the system time

sudo apt-get install git nodejs nodejs-legacy smbclient ntpdate

Setup Git

The user name and email must be set to do just about anything with Git.

git config --global user.name "First Last"
git config --global user.email "alias@microsoft.com"

Setup Visual Studio Online

Teach Git to use the mshttps protocol for Visual Studio Online. The URL mapping (and mshttps itself) is needed for the two factor authentication that internal VSO imposes.

git config --global url.mshttps://msostc.visualstudio.com/.insteadof https://msostc.visualstudio.com/
git config --global url.mshttps://microsoft.visualstudio.com/.insteadof https://microsoft.visualstudio.com/

Download mshttps using SMB from a Windows share.

Alternatively you can get git-remote-mshttps.tar.gz on Windows and upload it to your Linux machine.

smbclient --user=domain\\username --directory=drops\\RemoteHelper.NodeJS\\latest \\\\gitdrop\\ProjectJ -c "get git-remote-mshttps.tar.gz"

If the file transfer fails with tree connect failed: NT_STATUS_DUPLICATE_NAME, use nslookup gitdrop to obtain its canonical name (currently osgbldarcfs02.redmond.corp.microsoft.com) and use it instead.

Install mshttps, and update the system time (necessary for authentication with VSO).

sudo tar -xvf git-remote-mshttps.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/git-remote-mshttps
sudo ntpdate time.nist.gov

Download source code

Clone our monad-linux source from Visual Studio Online. We use the develop branch, and several submodules, necessitating the arguments.

git clone -b develop --recursive https://msostc.visualstudio.com/DefaultCollection/PS/_git/monad-linux

Setup build environment

If you use Docker, this part is already done for you; just prefix your build commands with ./build.sh. But you do need Docker.

Use Docker

Setting up Docker has been made as simple as running a script.

wget -qO- https://get.docker.com/ | sh

To make Docker work better on Ubuntu, you should also setup a Docker group.

sudo usermod -aG docker <your local user>

Then log out and back in. This eliminates the need to sudo before every Docker command.

Check the official installation documentation first if you have problems setting it up.

Technical info

We have an automated build repository on the Docker Hub that provisions an image from this Dockerfile. This image contains all the necessary build dependencies, and is based on Ubuntu 14.04.

Using this image amounts to running an ephemeral container with the local source code mounted as a shared volume, which is precisely what build.sh does (as well as pass on command-line arguments). If the andschwa/magrathea image is not already present, it is automatically pulled from the Hub.

docker run --rm --interactive --tty --volume /absolute/path/to/monad-linux/:/opt/monad --workdir /opt/monad/scripts andschwa/magrathea make run

It is run interactively with a tty, and so acts as if a shell had been opened to the container. The actual compilation takes place in the mounted volume, that is, the host machine's local source code repository. The magic of Docker is that the compilation processes take place in the context of the container, and so have all the dependencies satisfied. To prevent literring the host with containers, it is automatically removed when it exits; this is not a problem because all side effects happen on the host's file system, and similarly creating the container requires very minimal overhead.

Manually install dependencies

Skip this section if you installed Docker.

Setup the Mono package repository because Ubuntu's Mono packages are out of date.

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 3FA7E0328081BFF6A14DA29AA6A19B38D3D831EF
echo "deb http://download.mono-project.com/repo/debian wheezy main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mono-xamarin.list
sudo apt-get update

Install necessary packages.

• Mono, the C# compiler for Linux
• Nuget, the C# package manager
• libunwind8, used to determine the call-chain
• GCC and G++, for compiling C and C++ native code
• GNU Make, for building monad-linux
• CMake, for building src/monad-native

sudo apt-get install mono-devel nuget libunwind8 gcc g++ make cmake

Building

If you're using the Docker container, just prefix all build steps like so: ./build.sh make test

1. cd scripts since it contains the Makefile and build.sh
2. make prepare will use Nuget to download several dependencies
3. make all will build PowerShell for Linux
4. make run will execute a demo, "a","b","c","a","a" | Select-Object -Unique
5. make run-interactive will open an interactive PowerShell console
6. make test will execute the unit tests
7. make clean will remove the built objects
8. make cleanall will also remove the Nuget packages

TODO: Unit tests

TODO: Docker shell-in-a-box

TODO: Architecture