Host PowerShell Core in .NET Core Applications

PowerShell Core v6.0.1 and Later

The runtime assemblies for Windows, Linux and OSX are now published in NuGet package version 6.*.

Please see the .NET Core Sample Application section for an example that uses PowerShell Core NuGet packages.

.NET Core Sample Application

Note: The .NET Core 2.1 runtime and .NET Core SDK 2.1 or higher is required for the examples below:

sample

You can find the sample application project MyApp in each of the above 2 sample folders. You can quickly test-run it using dotnet run. To build the sample project properly for distribution, run the following command (make sure the required .NET Core SDK is in use):

dotnet publish .\MyApp --configuration release

This builds it for the runtimes specified by the RuntimeIdentifiers property in the .csproj file. Then you can run the MyApp binary from the publish folder and see the results:

PS:> .\MyApp.exe

Evaluating 'Get-Command Write-Output' in PS Core Runspace

Write-Output

Evaluating '([S.M.A.ActionPreference], [S.M.A.AliasAttribute]).FullName' in PS Core Runspace

System.Management.Automation.ActionPreference
System.Management.Automation.AliasAttribute

Special Hosting Scenario For Native Host

There is a special hosting scenario for native hosts, where Trusted Platform Assemblies (TPA) do not include PowerShell assemblies, such as the in-box powershell.exe in Nano Server and the Azure DSC host.

For such hosting scenarios, the native host needs to bootstrap by calling PowerShellAssemblyLoadContextInitializer.SetPowerShellAssemblyLoadContext. When using this API, the native host can pass in the path to the directory that contains PowerShell assemblies. A handler will then be registered to the Resolving event of the default load context to deal with the loading of assemblies from that directory.