Installation¶

PSScriptBuilder is distributed through the PowerShell Gallery and has no dependencies beyond the PowerShell runtime itself — see the Requirements section for exact version support.

Getting it set up is a one-time process with three steps:

Install the module from the Gallery
Verify it landed correctly
Import it the one specific way its classes and enums require

All three are covered in full — including the two confirmation prompts you are likely to see the first time you install anything from the PowerShell Gallery on a given machine, and the correct way to import a module that exposes PowerShell classes. That last part is worth reading even if you have installed PowerShell modules many times before: most modules only export functions, so the usual Import-Module habit does not raise any warning signs — it simply produces confusing errors once you try to use a class.

Requirements¶

Requirement	Version
PowerShell	5.1 or later (Windows PowerShell and PowerShell 7+)
Operating System	Windows, Linux, macOS

Step 1 — Install the Module¶

The first time you install anything from the PowerShell Gallery on a machine, Install-Module commonly stops for one of two reasons before it gets to actually installing anything:

Untrusted repository — PSGallery is not trusted by default; you are asked to confirm
Publisher verification — only if a differently-signed copy of the module already exists locally

Neither is specific to PSScriptBuilder, and both are safe to resolve — at most, you may need to answer a prompt or add one flag to the install command itself. Both are explained here first, since you are reasonably likely to run into at least the first one.

Untrusted repository. The PowerShell Gallery is not marked as a trusted repository by default. Unless it has already been trusted on this machine — from installing some other module previously — Install-Module stops and asks for confirmation before proceeding:

Prompt shown on first install from an untrusted repository

You are installing the modules from an untrusted repository. If you trust this
repository, change its InstallationPolicy value by running the Set-PSRepository
cmdlet. Are you sure you want to install the modules from 'PSGallery'?
[Y] Yes  [A] Yes to All  [N] No  [L] No to All  [S] Suspend  [?] Help (default is "N"):

Answer Y (or A for "Yes to All" if you are installing several modules at once) to proceed for this command only. To skip this prompt permanently for PSGallery, mark it trusted once, before running Install-Module:

Set-PSRepository -Name PSGallery -InstallationPolicy Trusted

Publisher verification. PSScriptBuilder is not Authenticode-signed. This only becomes a problem if a differently-signed (or likewise unsigned) copy of a module with the same name is already present on this machine — for example, from an earlier manual install — in which case Install-Module fails outright with a publisher check error instead of merely prompting. If that happens, add -SkipPublisherCheck to the install command.

Install the module:

Install-Module -Name PSScriptBuilder -Scope CurrentUser

To install for all users on the machine instead (requires elevated permissions):

Install-Module -Name PSScriptBuilder -Scope AllUsers

Step 2 — Verify the Installation¶

Get-Module -Name PSScriptBuilder -ListAvailable

This lists every installed version of PSScriptBuilder together with the folder it was installed into. A successful installation shows at least one entry:

Expected output

    Directory: C:\Users\<you>\Documents\PowerShell\Modules

ModuleType Version Name            ExportedCommands
---------- ------- ----            ----------------
Script     1.2.0   PSScriptBuilder {Add-PSScriptBuilderCollector, Compress-PSScriptBuilderScript, ...}

If the command returns nothing, that does not necessarily mean the installation failed.

On Windows, the most likely reason is that you are checking from a different PowerShell edition than the one you used to install. Windows is the only platform where PowerShell exists as two separate editions — Windows PowerShell (powershell.exe) and PowerShell 7+ (pwsh.exe) — each with its own default module folder, even for the same -Scope. A module installed under one edition is simply not visible from the other. On Linux and macOS, where only PowerShell 7+ exists, this particular cause does not apply.

Fix: run the verification command in the same PowerShell window you used for Install-Module. If you need PSScriptBuilder available in both editions, install it once from each — or see Troubleshooting: sharing a module path across PowerShell editions for a one-time fix that unifies the two.

Step 3 — Import the Module¶

PSScriptBuilder exposes PowerShell classes and enums. PowerShell only makes class and enum definitions available when a module is imported with using module.

Import PSScriptBuilder this way, as the very first statement in your script, before any other code:

✅ Correct — classes and enums are available

using module PSScriptBuilder

Do not import it this way:

❌ Wrong — classes and enums will NOT be available

Import-Module PSScriptBuilder

Why this matters: using module and Import-Module do different things:

using module is a parser directive
While parsing the script, PowerShell reads the module's class and enum definitions and registers them as resolvable type literals.
Import-Module is an ordinary cmdlet
It loads the module's exported functions into the session like any other module, but it never performs that type-literal registration.

In practice, if you import PSScriptBuilder the wrong way and your script then references one of its enum values:

[PSScriptBuilderCollectorType]::ClassCollector

— it fails:

Result

Unable to find type [PSScriptBuilderCollectorType].

Because using module needs to be processed by the parser, PowerShell's grammar requires it to be the very first statement in the script. Comments and blank lines are fine before it — an actual statement is not:

Result of a real statement before using module

A 'using' statement must appear before any other statements in a script.

This applies to a script file, parsed as a whole. At an interactive PowerShell prompt, each line you enter is parsed and run on its own, so using module just needs to run before you reference one of PSScriptBuilder's types — not necessarily as the first command you've ever typed in that session.

Next Steps¶

With the module installed, verified, and importable, setup is complete. Head to Quick Start to scaffold a new project and run your first build in under a minute.

Tips¶

Keeping PSScriptBuilder up to date

Checks the PowerShell Gallery for a newer version and installs it:

Update-Module -Name PSScriptBuilder

This goes through the Gallery the same way Install-Module does, so the same untrusted-repository prompt described for installing the module can reappear here too, if the repository has not been marked trusted. The new version is installed alongside any older ones already present — Update-Module does not remove them. To remove an old version once you no longer need it:

Uninstall-Module -Name PSScriptBuilder -RequiredVersion <old version>