DebugConsole: make powershell work interactively like CMD

[ahmelsayed]

Powershell doesn't seem to work with stdout and stdin redirection like cmd.exe. I am not sure what the issue is with powershell, but they might have more robust APIs to accomplish this. We need to investigate this with powershell team.
@Gissues:{"order":78.84615384615373,"status":"backlog"}

[ghost]

I've played with this before and the best I've been able to do is call powershell -File -
Note the last "-" is important. you don't get a prompt but you get basic interactivity.

[davidebbo]

Wow, I just tried that in the new interactive console and it actually works! Check out this session:

D:\home>powershell -File -
PS D:\home> get-process

Handles  NPM(K)    PM(K)      WS(K) VM(M)   CPU(s)     Id ProcessName          
-------  ------    -----      ----- -----   ------     -- -----------          
     45       7     2172       4180    29     0.05   2792 cmd                  
    227      20    39044      39004   184     0.63   3316 powershell           
   2125      70    51648      60352   327     2.86    576 w3wp                 


PS D:\home> exit

D:\home> 

[davidebbo]

I tried prompting for input from PS and that blew up:

PS D:\home> $name = Read-Host 'What is your username?'
Read-Host : The Win32 internal error "The handle is invalid" 0x6 occurred 
PS D:\home> while getting the console mode. Contact Microsoft Customer Support Services.
At line:1 char:9
+ $name = Read-Host 'What is your username?'
+         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : ResourceUnavailable: (:) [Read-Host], HostException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : GetConsoleMode,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.ReadHostCommand

[ahmelsayed]

interesting, that seems related to how Azure is handling the Console Win32 APIs because it's completely different from OnPrem. I will open a bug for Stephen.

on the other hand, it seems that powershell already has some form of web access http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831417.aspx

[ahmelsayed]

@davidebbo since powershell works if you type "powershell -file -" instead of just "powershell" do you think it would be better if we just rewrite "powershell" to "powershell -file -" behind the scenes, display a sort of warning saying something like "type powershell -file - instead of powershell" or have a different link for powershell console all together?

[davidebbo]

Yes, I suppose we could do that.

Maybe a better approach is to have buttons in the DebugConsole that lets the user select what shell they want. The thinking is that a powershell user should be able to directly be in powershell, as opposed to starting in cmd and having to type 'powershell' to get there.

Implementation wise, it could be a query string param that choose the mode, e.g. /commandstream?shell=PowerShell. Not familiar with the Console SignalR logic, so maybe there is more to it. :)