Opening console applications in powershell

Question

I'm currently developing a win32 console application, and wondering if there is any way to make visual studio open it in powershell instead of cmd.exe when I'm debugging it.

All I really want is a better shell, where I can copy/paste etc. without clicking.

Thanks

Answer 1

I think you're mixing up the NT console subsystem (an app framework offerring common services) with cmd.exe (an application consuming those services.) When visuals studio runs a console application, it's not actually running CMD. CMD is a console application itself, no different than the app you are trying to debug, therefore running your application "in powershell" is equally as mistaken a concept.

If you mean trying to run it in PowerShell ISE, this is impossible. ISE is a Windows Application (NT GUI subsystem), which is an entirely different subsystem than that of the console.

-Oisin

Answer 2

You can try this.

1. Go to properties of your console project.
2. In Debug tab select Start external program and enter path to powershell.exe (C:\Windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe)
3. Enter ".\YourApp.exe" into Command line arguments

This starts your app in powershell. However it breaks a lot of things (like debugging, ...)