sudo !! (bang bang) for PowerShell

[Christoph-Wagner]

The just released 0.7.1 doesn’t support !! for PS. At face value, this seems like it should be pretty straight forward using Get-History, but I don’t have much experience with PS and even less with using PS from C#. I would like to look into it, but was wondering if you tried and encountered any showstoppers' or problems that might make this moot or extremely complicated.

[gerardog]

It's not a trivial task.
Currently gsudo is just the gsudo.exe C# app. gsudo !! on CMD uses a Windows Console API's to get its parent CMD history. On PS, there is no global WinApi call, and the c# App can't access the invoked PS session. Calling Get-History on another PS process ('pwsh -c Get-History') will return a empty or different list.
Maybe connecting to the invoker PS session with runspaces... but it doesn't feel good to me and probably has a lot of quirks. Even if we succed to do so, the history item does not have the same meaning on another context: eg. the history would say Get-FileHash $filename but we don't know the content of $filename.
So, we should first go for another item in the list: a gsudo-wrapper function (#39). The rationale for that is described on that issue, but the idea is to make elevation syntax feel more PS native. Once that one is coded, the !! can be implemented on that cmdlet as it can Get-History easily because the cmdlet runs in the same session as the invoker.

[oising]

the psreadline module maintains its own history list, and this module is default on every modern version of windows. get-history is ubiquitous, but has its own issues.

[majkinetor]

Using PSReadline or Get-History is easy to do via function.

 function gsudo!! { 
   $c = Get-Content (Get-PSReadLineOption).HistorySavePath | Select-Object -last 1 -Skip 1
   gsudo $c 
}

Add this to $PROFILE and problem solved. You can also easily make it support full syntax if you are into that.

[gerardog]

On gsudo v1.0 you may experiment editing gsudo.ps1 to:

if ($MyInvocation.Line -match "!!$")
{ 
	$c = Get-Content (Get-PSReadLineOption).HistorySavePath | Select-Object -last 1 -Skip 1
	gsudo $c
}
elseif($myinvocation.expectingInput) {
	$input | & gsudo.exe @args 
} 
else { 
	& gsudo.exe @args 
}

[AlessandroDiGioacchino]

On gsudo v1.0 you may experiment editing gsudo.ps1 to:

if ($MyInvocation.Line -match "!!$")
{ 
	$c = Get-Content (Get-PSReadLineOption).HistorySavePath | Select-Object -last 1 -Skip 1
	gsudo $c
}
elseif($myinvocation.expectingInput) {
	$input | & gsudo.exe @args 
} 
else { 
	& gsudo.exe @args 
}

What would be the path of such a file?

[mattcargile]

On gsudo v1.0 you may experiment editing gsudo.ps1 to:

if ($MyInvocation.Line -match "!!$")
{ 
	$c = Get-Content (Get-PSReadLineOption).HistorySavePath | Select-Object -last 1 -Skip 1
	gsudo $c
}
elseif($myinvocation.expectingInput) {
	$input | & gsudo.exe @args 
} 
else { 
	& gsudo.exe @args 
}

What would be the path of such a file?

@DigiOhhh It is located here. You'd have to download or clone it manually and pull it into your $PROFILE or the like. Additionally, if you are interested, please provide insight on Issue #39 to help future development in this space of the repo. There is a script Invoke-gsudo.ps1 that is being worked on and this !! function could be incorporated in it as a module or the like.

[gerardog]

For reference, for this feature to work on PowerShell, you need to follow the instructions given in the readme: Which is: import-module gsudoModule.psd1 in your $profile:

Please run the following, and it will do it for you:

Get-Command gsudoModule.psd1 | % { Write-Output "`nImport-Module `"$($_.Source)`"" | Add-Content $PROFILE }

[AlessandroDiGioacchino]

Doesn't work for me:
Error: Failed to find last invoked command (GetConsoleCommandHistoryLength==0)

[gerardog]

@DigiOhhh: have you imported gsudoModule as my last comment said? (plus reloading your profile)

[AlessandroDiGioacchino]

Yes, this is the content of my profile:

# Chocolatey profile
$ChocolateyProfile = "$env:ChocolateyInstall\helpers\chocolateyProfile.psm1"

if (Test-Path($ChocolateyProfile)) {
  Import-Module "$ChocolateyProfile"
}


Import-Module "C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\gsudo\bin\gsudoModule.psd1"

[gerardog]

Please: check you gsudo version, if not 1.3.0 do choco upgrade gsudo.
Change your $profile for the new path Import-Module 'C:\tools\gsudo\Current\gsudoModule.psd1'
Then restart your consoles, then paste the results of:

Get-Module gsudoModule | fl
Get-Command gsudo | fl

[gerardog]

Should look like:

[AlessandroDiGioacchino]

Anyways I think I got it: gsudo !! works, but sudo !! doesn't

[gerardog]

Right, I´ve updated the readme recently:

You can create a custom alias for gsudo or Invoke-gsudo, as you prefer: (add one of these lines to your $PROFILE)

• Set-Alias 'sudo' 'gsudo' or
• Set-Alias 'sudo' 'Invoke-gsudo'

The first one (Set-Alias 'sudo' 'gsudo') is the one you should append to your profile, at the bottom.

[AlessandroDiGioacchino]

Works good! Thank you