There comes a time in every programmer’s life when s/he has to strike out on his/her own, writing new code (instead of typing in examples from books / websites). That time has come now for me with regards to PowerShell.

But first, I have to set up my working environment.

Here at work, we have a common (i.e., shared) network directory on our Production resource server. There were no PowerShell utilities in the directory (probably because I think I’m the first person to do anything serious with PowerShell here, with the possible exception of the IT guys – and they don’t use the Production resource server).

However, it occurred to me that that common directory (call it N:\common\utils, because that’s not its name) would be a good place to put modules meant to be shared.

How do I tell PowerShell to look for modules there, without having to specify this every time I start PowerShell?

For now, I just:

1. created a PS subdirectory in N:\common\utils (PS for PowerShell, of course)
2. Started PowerShell on my PC and created a profile file in the $profile directory (per Recipe 1.6 from the Windows PowerShell Cookbook):
   New-Item -type file -force $profile
3. edited the profile file using Notepad.exe:
   notepad $profile
4. and added a line to add the common directory to the PSModulePath environment variable:
   $env:PSModulePath += “;N:\common\utils\PS”
   (the leading semicolon is the profile path separator)
5. exited notepad, saving $profile on the way out.

Now, whenever I start PowerShell, the $profile runs and adds the PS shared folder to the module search path.

To do the same thing (less step 1) for the Windows PowerShell ISE, I consulted Microsoft Technet article How to Use Profiles in Windows PowerShell ISE, which suggests wrapping the New-Item in step 2 in an if statement to prevent overwriting an existing profile, and using the ISE to edit the resulting profile file:

1. (PS subdirectory already created in N:\common\utils)
2. Started the PowerShell ISE and created a profile file in $profile:
   if (!(test-path $profile)) {New-Item -type file -path $profile -force}
3. edited the profile file (using the ISE editor):
   psEdit $profile
4. and added the same line to add the common directory to PSModulePath:
   $env:PSModulePath += “;N:\common\utils\PS”
5. then closed the ISE editor tab, saving the ISE $profile file on the way out

Now I just have to figure out modules and module manifests…