Overview

Welcome to PSMake! The very, very simple "Make"-like implementation for PowerShell (7.0+) users.

Why "PSMake"?

The traditional Makefile experience on Linux/Mac operating systems is super convenient. Being able to quickly define short, memorable targets to invoke frequently referenced commands is a quite useful boon to productivity.

The problem in this equation is Make on Windows. While there are ways to get Make working on Windows, they're not well defined, instructions aren't stellar, and it's a process fraught with edge-case error conditions that will likely not be documented.

PSMake is something I created (because I want to use it!) to produce a similar experience in a language available on all major operating systems.

Quick Start

Installing the Module

1. Head over to the releases section and grab the latest PSMake release zip file.
2. Extract this zip file somewhere on your machine. A path on the $env:PSModulePath is likely best.
3. [OPTIONAL]: Add loading of the module file to your PowerShell profile ($PROFILE) like:

# If you extracted the module file on
# $env:PSModulePath
Import-Module 'make'
# If you extracted the module file to an arbitrary
# location
Import-Module 'C:\Path\To\Make.psm1'

At this point "PSMake" is installed!

Creating a Working Example

Create a make.ps1 file with the following contents:

target 'sayhello' {
  foreach ($arg in $args) {
    Write-Host "Hello, ${arg}!"
  }
}

Note

Take note of the $args implementation, we'll go further into this later.

In your terminal, cd to the same directory as your make.ps1 file and run: make sayhello 'John' 'Steve' 'Rob'.

You should see:

PS> make sayhello 'John' 'Steve' 'Rob'
Hello, John!
Hello, Steve!
Hello, Rob!

User-provided PSMake Target Input

As we saw in the example above, if user input is provided - this is accessible from the $args automatic variable.

Note

$args will be of the length, size and type as the actual provided user input.

For example: make sometarget 'val1', 'val2' means $args will be of type string[] holding values val1 and val2.

The make command uses PowerShell's ValueFromRemainingArguments parameter attribute as a catchall for any "extra" user-provided arguments. This means all values not directly provided to a named or positional parameter will bind to the AdditionalArguments parameter. AdditionalArguments is then provided to your scriptblock, supplied via target mytarget { myscriptblock }, which PowerShell makes available to the scriptblock itself via the $args variable.

FAQ

Which operating systems is this supported on?

This is a primary reason for my choosing PowerShell to implement this functionality: any operating system Microsoft offers a PowerShell package for!

Are targets case sensitive?

No! PowerShell is not a case-sensitive language, your targets can be defined as mEmEcAsE if you so desired and that would work if invoked like: make memecase!