Test Powershell on Linux with Visual Studio Code and Docker

One of the promises (maybe, the biggest promise) of .NET Core and Powershell Core is being cross-platform, be able to develop applications (or Powershell scripts and modules) that can be executed on Windows, Linux and macOS; but how can we be sure the our application or script/module will actually run properly across all those platforms and distros? Talking about Powershell, PSScriptAnalyzer helps to check a script or function compatibility with certain Powershell versions or different platforms. But what if I want to actually write and test my script/module on Linux (assuming my main machine is Windows, of course 😉)? One easy solution is to spin up a virtual machine, install the tools I need (.NET Core, Powershell Core, Visual Studio Code and anything else required) or use the Remote Development extension pack for Visual Studio Code and use Docker containers instead. Note: this requires Visual Studio Code Insiders at this time; pay attention to the Installation notes for good tips to get started. Also, take a look at Developing Inside a Container in the official VSCode documentation. The extension pack allows to choose between Windows Substrate for Linux, connect to a remote machine through SSH or run a Docker container…

I wrote countless scripts and a good amount of modules (and functions) in my years as Service Engineer but all of them are script modules, I never really created binary modules. The main reason is that I like to write in Powershell but I also like the fact that, not being a compiled language, it is very easy to share and modify the source code for a script module and it is immediately ready to be reloaded and used. Anyway out of curiosity and to learn a different approach to building modules, I decided to try to convert one of mine from script to binary; my first step was (of course) a quick search to find some samples and getting started articles and I found a few good ones (referenced below) but all of them use Visual Studio and the full version of the .NET Framework, while I want to use Visual Studio Code and .NET Core. So here’s what I came up with. First off of course I need .NET Core (I am using the latest .NET Core 3 preview 8 at the moment), Visual Studio Code and the C# Extension. Next, I’m going to create a Class Library…