Which PowerShell editor do you use?

[mvbighead]

So I have been using some spare time at work to learn powershell, and have gotten some things figured out. One thing I have been having difficulty with was script-signing.

Well, it seems that MS's ISE apparently saves scripts with USC-2 Big Endian encoding by default, which, for whatever reason kills the ability of script signing. Since re-saving my script with a different editor (Notepad++) and resetting the encoding to UTF8, now I can finally sign the scripts.

So questions are:

1) Is there a way to adjust the ISE so that is saves in UTF8 by default?

2) What script editor do you use?

3) Given the editor you use, do you have something configured to auto-sign your scripts? (Presently working on testing PowerGUI myself with a plugin hosted on their site.)

Thanks in advance!

 

[Chapbass]

If anyone has any thoughts on this, im curous as well.

Thanks!

 

[pcgeek101]

I generally use Quest PowerGUI (http://powergui.org) because of its "Intellisense" features, similar to that of Visual Studio, and its variable browser. Of course, because PowerShell is not a strongly-typed language, the Intellisense is much weaker than Visual Studio with C#.

PowerShell ISE seems generally boring to me, but has just recently sparked an interest in me, as its performance is a bit better than PowerGUI, and I didn't realize that it's also extensible.

Cheers,
Trevor Sullivan
Consultant | 1E
http://trevorsullivan.net

 

[mvbighead]

Thanks Trevor. I have been using PowerGUI since my first post in this thread, and it seems to be quite nice. Downloaded a fellow's plugin and can auto-sign my scripts using CTRL+SHIFT+F. It ain't quite as easy as CTRL+S, but it'll do. I did like the feel of PowerShell ISE better, but the encoding thing is quite bothersome (and lack of a plugin to auto-sign the scripts).

Anyone else have more input to add?

 

[pcgeek101]

Yeah, the script signing is a big problem. I believe that costly editors such as PowerShell Plus or PrimalScript address this, but I'm not going to spend several hundred dollars out of pocket for such trivial features. There are plenty of methods for working around this; I have some ideas.

How about writing a PowerShell script that watches for filesystem changes, and automatically signs any .ps1[x] files that it sees changed? That wouldn't be too hard to put together -- I just haven't done it yet. In theory, anything is possible.

Edit: I'm unaware of a method of setting the ISE default to UTF-8, aside from monkeying around with an AutoIT script to do window detection.

Cheers,
Trevor Sullivan
Consultant | 1E
http://trevorsullivan.net

 

[bbutler]

I suggest checking out PowerSE. It's a newcomer to the Free PowerShell Editor Market that's worth a try. PowerSE Professional PowerShell Script Editor the URL (http://www.powerse.com). It's Intellisense is far superior than that found in other tools, and supports Intellisense for (PowerShell, WMI, and .NET).

 

[homercles337]

1) Is there a way to adjust the ISE so that is saves in UTF8 by default?

http://www.nivot.org/post/2010/05/21/PowerShellISEHackingChangeDefaultSaveEncodingToASCII.aspx