Are there any console (not GUI!) alternatives to powershell.exe?

There are a number of GUI hosts for Powershell (Powershell ISE, PoshConsole, etc) but I'm not aware of any purely console hosts other than powershell.exe. Are there any that offer any advantages over powershell.exe?

I'd like to be able to customise more of the host behaviour - specifically to add and customise key bindings other than TAB, and to customise error reporting. There could well be more...

If there aren't any "extended" versions of powershell.exe that offer this, how difficult would it be to write one? I have the SDK sample code, and it looks fairly accessible, but it's hard to be sure what featur开发者_StackOverflow中文版es powershell.exe provides as opposed to the powershell "engine" (as there's no documentation I've found that focuses specifically on the host capabilities).

How about Console it can host multiple shells. Might be worth a look.

The best pure-console for PowerShell is obviously PowerShell Plus, which actually uses a fullblown "native" Windows console, but it wraps it up in candy coating and adds tons of IDE-style features. As far as I know this is the only third-party host that's capable of running "graphical" console apps like edit.com

As a sidenote, I'm honestly not sure it's worth the handicap of a true console just to keep compatibility with whatever graphical interactive console applications like Edit.com might still be around. Considering the limitations, and the amount of work that has to be done to pull off something like what PowerShell Plus has... Personally I can't wait for the day when I no longer have to worry about and can move on to console apps that are really MEF-style plugins in a console-style interface like PoshConsole :-)

I realise that this question is years old, but since I stumbled across it in search of answers, I thought I would add my findings.

I settled on Cmder, for the following reasons:

• It wraps cmd and Powershell, so you get the same set of features you would find in either.
• The default colour scheme is Monokai, which is not only pleasing to the eye, but actually readable. Maybe I was missing something, but the default output for most of my tasks (Git, Mocha tests etc.) had poor contrast most of the time and I found myself squinting at the screen.
• Tab support - I've wanted this for a while, but until now I hadn't found a solution that provided tabs as well as everything else. Powershell IDE has some character encoding / text colour issues that I couldn't ignore.
• It's portable - stick it on a USB stick and take it with you wherever you go.
• It's configurable - the developer (Samuel Vasko) has done a great job here. It's not lacking for customisation.
• Specifically answering the OP's requirements, you can remap key bindings and create macros. I don't see the ability to customise error reporting however.

Hopefully anyone else out there still searching for a decent command line emulator on Windows will see this answer and rejoice.

If you stick with a "Console" subsystem approach you will be saddled with all the limitations that come along with a Windows console subsystem application. Many complaints about PowerShell.exe limitations are really limitations of this feature of Windows (kbd shortcuts, line editing, etc).

What's wrong with PoshConsole? Even though it allows graphics to be displayed it is still a "console-style" UI on top of the PowerShell engine?