Efficient Powershell Script Management on Windows - Using Scoop and Github

Introduction

If you have powershell scripts that you use frequently and you need to manage them, usually you might have them locally on a folder.

Maybe you have them on a Git Repository, and you backed them up remotely. Maybe you have added them into your PATH manually and you can run them easily.

That all requires manual intervention. But maybe you created a script that handles the installation of them, and adds them to the path. All good.

In this article I will explain another way of managing PowerShell Scripts by delegating all this to Scoop and Github Repos and Packages.

Requirements

• Windows 10+
• PowerShell
• Git
• scoop
• GitHub Account
• GitHub CLI

Setup

1. Install scoop

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser
Invoke-RestMethod -Uri https://get.scoop.sh | Invoke-Expression

1. Create GitHub Account
2. Install PowerShell

winget install -e --id Microsoft.PowerShell.Preview

1. Install Git

winget install -e --id Git.Git

1. Install GitHub CLI and authenticate with your account

winget install -e --id GitHub.cli

gh auth login

Create a Scoop Bucket

Create a Github Repository named scoop-bucket by using the gh cli

If you prefer the repo to be private replace — public with — private

gh repo create --public --add-readme scoop-bucket

# ✓ Created repository {username}/scoop-bucket on GitHub
#  https://github.com/{username/scoop-bucket

gh repo clone {username}/scoop-bucket

Navigate into the repository and add a folder named bucket and a folder scripts. If you wish add a README.md to describe how to use the repo and list the available scripts.

cd scoop-bucket

mkdir bucket
touch bucket/.gitkeep

mkdir scripts
touch scripts/.gitkeep

The folder structure must look like this

tree 

# ├── README.md
# ├── bucket
# │   └── .gitkeep
# └── scripts
#    └── .gitkeep

Push the changes to the repo

git add .

git commit -m "Initial commit"
git push

Create a PowerShell script and an Scoop App Manifest

Create PowerShell script

Lets create a Hello World PowerShell script, hello-scoop.ps1 on the scripts folder

touch scripts/hello-scoop.ps1

Add the following

Write-Host "Hello from Scoop!"

Lets create a Github Gist for now to upload the powershell script.

gh gist create --public scripts/hello-scoop.ps1

# - Creating gist hello-scoop.ps1
# ✓ Created public gist hello-scoop.ps1
# https://gist.github.com/{username}/{gist_id}

If you prefer you can get the raw link from the repository instead of creating the gist.

Create a scoop manifest

Create a Scoop App Manifest on the bucket folder create a file hello-scoop.json

touch bucket/hello-scoop.json

Add the following

{
    "version": "0.1",
    "url": "https://gist.github.com/{username}/{gist_id}/raw/hello-scoop.ps1",
    "bin": "hello-scoop.ps1"
}

Add your Bucket to Scoop and install script

To add the bucket to scoop run the following (replace username with your github username)

scoop bucket add myscripts https://github.com/{username}/scoop-bucket

Install hello-scoop

scoop install myscripts/hello-scoop

Run hello-scoop

hello-scoop

# Hello from Scoop!

List all the scripts from myscripts

scoop list | Where-Object { $_.Source -eq 'myscripts' }

Automating Scripts Creation with Github Actions

To automate the publication of the scripts, lets create a github workflow. In order to do that

mkdir -p .github/workflow
touch .github/workflow/publish-scripts.yaml

Add the following to publish-scripts.yaml, so it can publish app manifests for scoop automatically when a powershell script is added on scripts folder

name: Publish scripts
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
    paths:
      - scripts/**
   
jobs:
  publish-script:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - run: cat .github/manifest-template.json

      - name: Get changed files in the docs folder
        id: changed-files-specific
        uses: tj-actions/changed-files@v44
        with:
          files: scripts/**
          
      - name: Run step if any file(s) in the docs folder change
        if: steps.changed-files-specific.outputs.any_changed == 'true'
        env:
          ALL_CHANGED_FILES: $
        run: |
          for file_path in ${ALL_CHANGED_FILES}; do
            file_name=$(echo $file_path | awk -F'/' '{print $NF}')
            only_name=$(echo "${file_name%%.*}" )
            bucket_path="bucket/$only_name.json"


            cp .github/manifest-template.json $bucket_path
            sed "s//${file_name}/g" .github/manifest-template.json > $bucket_path
          done
          git config user.name "GitHub Actions Bot"
          git config user.email "<>"

          git add .
          git status

          git commit -m "add scripts"
          git push origin main

Then enable write permissions for github actions

Now let’s create an app manifest template for the workflow in .github/create-app-manifest.json

{
    "version": "0.1",
    "url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com//main/scripts/",
    "bin": ""
}

This will create a new app manifest on buckets, and scoop will immediately pull the new app when running

scoop update

Testing the scoop bucket

If we now create a bye-scoop.ps1 script in scripts folder

touch scripts/bye-scoop.ps1

And now add the following to the script

Write-Host "Bye Scoop!"

Commit and push the changes

git add .
git commit -m "Added bye scoop"
git push

And update scoop and install the new app

scoop update
scoop install myscripts/bye-scoop

Let’s list the existing scripts by running

scoop list | Where-Object { $_.Source -eq 'myscripts' }

Check my Github scoop-bucket repository

If you would like to check the original source code, you can check the repository I have created here.