Richiban

Keeping your Powershell profiles and functions synchronised between computers

Posted on 2012-11-03 Updated on 2012-11-03

If you’re like me and you use Powershell on a regular basis, you probably have a load of functions set up in your profile.ps1 file so that they get loaded when you start a new session. The moment you start doing this, there’s the constant problem in the background of how to keep this in sync between different computers. I will often be fooling around with some new technology at home and will come up with a super-useful Powershell command, and will then need it at work as well.

I solved this problem with use of Dropbox (you could use any other file syncing app you like, such as Skydrive (or even a network share), the only prerequisite is that it supports symbolic links).

1. If you haven’t already, separate your Powershell functions into distinct files, and have them all be loaded by your profile.ps1, which acts as a bootstrapper. Your profile will look something like this:

   $scriptFiles = gci "$home\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\*.ps1" -Exclude "profile.ps1"
   
   foreach ($scriptFile in $scriptFiles)
   {
   . "$($scriptFile.PSPath)" | out-null
   }

   Once you’ve accomplished this, you need to create the symbolic link. Open the command prompt and cd into your My Documents folder. If you already have a directory called WindowsPowershell in there, you’ll need to delete it, copying all the files within into your new directory in Dropbox. The command you need to run is this:

   mklink /D WindowsPowershell <dropboxPowershellDir>

   where <dropboxPowershellDir> is the full path to the directory of scripts in your Dropbox folder. Et voilà, you now have a Powershell profile that synchronises between computers!