powershell-docset : A dash docset for powershell modules

Status

posh-to-dash.py scrapes the newly announced https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/ website in order to create an offline dash-compatible archive to be viewed in Dash, Zeal or Velocity :

Releases

• v0.1 -- Minimal working version
• v0.2 -- Offline mode supported
• v0.3 -- travis setup
• v0.4 -- user contributed docset
• v0.5 -- versionned docsets
• v0.6 -- windows 10 modules documentation
• v0.7.2 -- powershell 7.1 documentation

Installation & Execution

posh-to-dash.py relies on :

• requests for http(s) downloads
• selenium and phantomjs for webscraping
• bs4 for html parsing and rewriting

1. Copy the repository
2. Install the dependencies from requirements.txt, use a virtualenv to avoid problems with dependencies and versions.
3. Download the geckodriver from Mozilla's Repo, download the version that matches your OS.
4. Place the geckodriver in your path

• If Windows, grab the executable an place it in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps

• If Linux, move it to your ~/.local/bin or wherever you have your path

5. Start scraping by typing : posh-to-dash.py --output=$outputfile --version=6 --temporary

• if --output is not provided, posh-to-dash.py will output "Powershell.tgz' into the working directory
• the --version switch support only Powershell API versions 7.0, 7.1 (default) and 7.2 , the rest are obsolete by Microsoft.
• --temporary specify to download the web scraping resources in a temporary folder instead of clobbering the current directory. However if the download fail, the results will be thrown out.

NOTE: The process takes 15+ minutes to run. The more versions you download increases the time.

Add your docset to Zeal

With the Powershell.tar file, unzip it and place it in C:\Users\<your-username>\AppData\Local\Zeal\Zeal\docsets

Limitations

The powershell modules API endpoint is quite new, so it may be subject to breakage by the docs.microsoft.com people.