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Microsoft's PowerShell is now open-sourced, and has been ported to both Linux and Mac OS X

By Wong Chung Wee - on 25 Aug 2016, 9:46am

Microsoft's PowerShell is now open-sourced, and has been ported to both Linux and Mac OS X

(Source: Microsoft)

Microsoft's PowerShell is now open-sourced, and the scripting language has been ported to both Linux and Mac OS X platforms. PowerShell is built on the Windows .NET framework. It allows system administrators to control and operate applications operating on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux platforms.

The porting of PowerShell to other non-Windows platforms was only natural as Microsoft made its .NET core framework available on both Mac OS X and Linux platforms. The company worked with partners who were experienced with open source to make good its commitment to the community. And with the Redmond giant's know-how in managing enterprise-level software projects, the roles and responsibilities of vested parties to this project were clearly defined, so that their respective contributions to the project were "smoothly incorporated." Mr. Jeffrey Snover Technical Fellow, Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Group, encouraged users to download the alpha builds and source code of PowerShell from GitHub. And if you are new to PowerShell, there's even free course, Getting Started with PowerShell 3.0 Jump Start, on Microsoft Virtual Academy.

With the new PowerShell 3.0, users can look forward to PowerShell Editor Service, which gives users the freedom to choose from a variety of editors, like VS Code and Sublime. PowerShell scripting now comes with IntelliSense and debugging features. For more security when administering applications on remote hosts, the Microsoft team will be extending "PowerShell Remoting Protocol (MS-PSRP) to use OpenSSH as a native transport."

According to Snover, this is the initial alpha release of PowerShell 3.0 and the project will be community-driven. In the future, Microsoft will be releasing its official open source version of PowerShell "to anyone running a supported version of Windows or *nix." However, he stopped short of committing to an official release date. For more information, do visit this link for the company's official statement.

Source: Microsoft via InformationWeek

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