There are some sequences of commands I use over and over again. I decided to make commands that will execute these sequences together.

At first, I thought an alias would be perfect for this job. As it turns out, PowerShell aliases can only execute one command. Functions, however, can execute multiple commands.

For example, say I just fixed a bug in a Node.js package I am writing. Now I want to bump the version number of my package, publish it through npm, and push the changes to a remote repository.

Normally, I’d execute three commands.

npm version patch
npm publish
git push --follow-tags

This gets tedious when you’re constantly fixing bugs. If I stuff the commands inside a function…

function Publish-Patch {
>>   npm version patch
>>   npm publish
>>   git push --follow-tags
>> }

I can reuse the function any time I fix a bug!

Publish-Patch

This works great. Except it doesn’t persist across sessions.

In order to write persistent functions, you’ll have to store them in a PowerShell profile. A profile is a script that gets run at the beginning of every session.

PowerShell supports multiple profiles depending on your environment. You can set a profile to run for only a specific user or only inside a specific host program. See the documentation for more information.

For my purpose, I want to create profile that will run for the current user (me) in any host (command line, VS Code, etc).

Edit the profile in Notepad.

notepad $PROFILE.CurrentUserAllHosts

Pro tip: replace notepad with code if you have VS Code installed for a better editing experience.

If no profile exists, Notepad will ask if you want to create it. Accept the prompt.

In Notepad, write the function.

function Publish-Patch {
  npm version patch
  npm publish
  git push --follow-tags
}

In fact, I want to create functions for each type of update — not just patches. That’s easy, too. Just write the other functions below the first.

function Publish-Patch {
  npm version patch
  npm publish
  git push --follow-tags
}

function Publish-Minor {
  npm version minor
  npm publish
  git push --follow-tags
}

function Publish-Major {
  npm version major
  npm publish
  git push --follow-tags
}

There’s one last step before we’re done. By default, PowerShell blocks scripts from running. Which in turn will block your profile from running. You can easily change this setting, though.

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser

I chose the RemoteSigned execution policy. It allows scripts to be run, but those from remote sources must be signed by a trusted publisher. While this works for me, there are other execution policies to choose from.

That’s it! Restart your PowerShell session. Now those functions will always be available to you.