PowerShell scratch pad GUI app #27864

It has taken some time to work out what I have being building, but after adding Linux and FreeBSD implementations I now claim to have built the simplest functioning cross platform graphical IDE possible.

It works by running a PowerShell process as a tool server, this services requests using a binary protocol over stdin and stdout. It manages a group of runspaces allocated on demand by the client. The client has a simple text document interface where fragments of text can be run on the associated runspace. One client window is mapped to one runspace in the server.

The PowerShell process can either be PowerShell Desktop or PowerShell Core depending on your configuration ( hello HKCU ). Or even use ssh -T ... to run it on a different machine to the UI.

The Windows interface looks almost identical to the classic Notepad, the Linux version looks like CDE dtpad. There are working FreeBSD builds because I packaged PowerShell to run native on FreeBSD 13.3. While apps built using Motif may look lacking when run on Gnome, they look glorious on CDE when all the properties are automatically consistent set across the whole desktop ( turquoise and orange ).

My next plans are for a Qt and a Cocoa UI.

I have added a Cocoa AppKit release so that completes the trifecta.

The macOS version also supports AppleEvents so you can use AppleScript to send a do script event direct to the app, execute a PowerShell script and get the response.

Eg from Script Editor

tell application "MPW Shell"
	do script "$PSVersionTable"
end tell

Or from zsh

% osascript -e 'tell application "MPW Shell" to do script "Get-Runspace"'

Apple carved ToolServer out of their MPW Shell to support AppleEvents so I did the same thing, ToolServer.app is a small windowless building that can execute PowerShell scripts.

% osascript -e 'tell application "ToolServer" to do script "Write-Output 42"'

ToolServer will quietly launch if not running and service the script request, which gives you a way of running PowerShell scripts from a shell script without the overhead of the start-up time for each script.

With do script, each request gets its own dedicated runspace which is terminated after the script ends so parallel requests are completely independent.