Shells

Rez provides support for a number of shells on Windows, Linux and MacOS. Each of which operate almost identically, some having their own special powers.

Windows and Command-line History

A normal Rez context generates a deep process hierarchy.

1. Under normal circumstances, Rez is made available as rez.exe, generated by pip install into a virtual environment.
2. This executable calls another executable python.exe from that same install
3. Which in turn calls the parent Python process from which your virtual environment was made, e.g. c:\python37\python.exe
4. From here, Rez instantiates your REZ_DEFAULT_SHELL, e.g. cmd

That's 4 layers of processes, one calling the next.

It just so happens that 4 is the default number of buffers the windows ConHost.exe is configured to keep track of, which means that when you launch a 5th layer you lose history.

To account for this, configure your shell to keep track of 5 or more buffers.

Windows PowerShell

On Windows, you'll likely want to use PowerShell.

Note that "Windows Powershell" is different from PowerShell 6 and above, which is cross-platform but not yet supported by Rez.

• Aliases are created as function ()

Resources

• Scoop Package Manager
• Why PowerShell
• Getting Started
• PowerShell Masterclass

Process Management

PowerShell, like Python, works with objects rather than text like cmd and bash.

PS> $fx = get-process -name firefox
PS> $fx.path
# C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe
PS> $fx.workingset / 1mb
# 414.23828125
PS> $fx.kill()

Aliases

PS> ls
# 
#     Directory: C:\Users\marcus\.ssh
# 
# Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
# ----                -------------         ------ ----
# -a----       11/02/2018     15:52           1766 id_rsa
# -a----       18/02/2018     11:30           1486 id_rsa.ppk
# -a----       11/02/2018     15:52            392 id_rsa.pub
# -a----       18/03/2019     08:05           3514 known_hosts

PS> get-alias clear
# CommandType     Name                                               Version    Source
# -----------     ----                                               -------    ------
# Alias           cls -> Clear-Host

Working with processes

Get-Member is akin to Python's dir().

PS> $notepad = start-process notepad -passthru
PS> $notepad | get-member
#    TypeName: System.Diagnostics.Process
# 
# Name                       MemberType     Definition
# ----                       ----------     ----------
# ...
# Name                       AliasProperty  Name = ProcessName
# Company                    ScriptProperty System.Object Company # {get=$this.Mainmodule.FileVersionInfo.CompanyName;}
# ...
# Path                       ScriptProperty System.Object Path {get=$this.Mainmodule.FileName;}
# WorkingSet                 Property       int WorkingSet {get;}
# Kill                       Method         void Kill()
# Refresh                    Method         void Refresh()
# Start                      Method         bool Start()
# ToString                   Method         string ToString()
# ...
PS> $notepad.company
# Microsoft Corporation

.bashrc on PowerShell

Also found out that PowerShell has a startup script like Bash does; that's amazing. It means you can store not just environment variables "globally" but also functions and aliases like with Bash.

PS> $profile
C:\Users\marcus\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
PS> echo 'set-alias -name eco -value echo' >> $profile

Run with double-click

Normally, .ps1 scripts, unlike .bat, open with notepad. Here's how you can change that.

This time you do need to be admin, unless there's another variable for the local user?

PS> reg add "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Microsoft.PowerShellScript.1\Shell\Open\Command" /d "\`"C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe\`" -noLogo -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted -file \`"%1\`""
Value  exists, overwrite(Yes/No)? yes
The operation completed successfully.

The interesting bit being ExecutionPolicy unrestricted. Running PS scripts are not allowed per default on Windows. You can either allow it per invokation like this, or globally like this:

Set-ExecutionPolicy unrestricted -scope CurrentUser

Commands to variables

Like Bash, the result of a command can be passed to a variable.

PS> $cd = "$(pwd)"

This example is particularly important, as $(pwd) in Bash returns a string (Bash doesn't have types) whereas in PS it returns an object. Wrapping it in " is akin to str() in that it converts the object to its string representation.

$ mkdir temp
$ cd "$(pwd)\temp"

The cool thing about an object is that it's got properties and methods. :)

PS> $(pwd) | Get-Member

   TypeName: System.Management.Automation.PathInfo

Name         MemberType Definition
----         ---------- ----------
Equals       Method     bool Equals(System.Object obj)
GetHashCode  Method     int GetHashCode()
GetType      Method     type GetType()
ToString     Method     string ToString()
Drive        Property   System.Management.Automation.PSDriveInfo Drive {get;}
Path         Property   string Path {get;}
Provider     Property   System.Management.Automation.ProviderInfo Provider {get;}
ProviderPath Property   string ProviderPath {get;}

Undo/Redo

🤓 Yes, ctrl+z/ctrl+y works on the command-line, similar to a text-editor.

Ctrl+Space

You can list commands from a partial entry with ctrl+space.

Send to Clipboard

PS> get-process | clip

And ctrl+v to paste.

Navigate registry and environment like files

Apparently, PS doesn't distinguish between what is a filesystem and what is an environment or registry, each referred to as a "drive".

PS> cd c:
PS> cd hkcu:
PS> cd env:
PS> pwd
Path
----
Env:\

PS> Get-PSDrive                                                                     
Name           Used (GB)     Free (GB) Provider      Root
----           ---------     --------- --------      ----
Alias                                  Alias
C                 460.97         13.79 FileSystem    C:\
Cert                                   Certificate   \
Env                                    Environment
Function                               Function
HKCU                                   Registry      HKEY_CURRENT_USER
HKLM                                   Registry      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Variable                               Variable
WSMan                                  WSMan

Get startup environment from running process

PS> $maya = get-process -name maya
PS> $si = $maya.startupinfo
PS> $si.environment["PATH"]
C:\Program Files\Docker\Docker\Resources\bin;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program Files\Git\cmd;C:\Program Files\Git\mingw64\bin;C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin;C:\WINDOWS\System32\OpenSSH\

cmd

Things to be aware of when using Rez with cmd is that environment variables such as PATH and PYTHONPATH are limited in length to 2,000 characters.

• Aliases are created with doskey.exe

bash

The default shell on Linux and MacOS.

• Aliases are created as function()