Installing PowerShell on Alpine Linux

Article
10/24/2024

All packages are available on our GitHub releases page. After the package is installed, run pwsh from a terminal. Run pwsh-preview if you installed a preview release. Before installing, check the list of Supported versions below.

Note

PowerShell 7.4 is an in-place upgrade that removes previous versions of PowerShell 7. Preview versions of PowerShell can be installed side-by-side with other versions of PowerShell. If you need to run PowerShell 7.4 side-by-side with a previous version, reinstall the previous version using the binary archive method.

Installation steps

Installation on Alpine is based on downloading tar.gz package from the releases page. The URL to the package depends on the version of PowerShell you want to install.

PowerShell 7.4.6 - https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases/download/v7.4.6/powershell-7.4.6-linux-musl-x64.tar.gz
PowerShell 7.2.24 - https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases/download/v7.2.24/powershell-7.2.24-linux-alpine-x64.tar.gz
PowerShell 7.5-preview.4 - https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases/download/v7.5.0-preview.3/powershell-7.5.0-preview.3-linux-musl-x64.tar.gz

Then, in the terminal, execute the following shell commands to install PowerShell 7.4:

# install the requirements
sudo apk add --no-cache \
    ca-certificates \
    less \
    ncurses-terminfo-base \
    krb5-libs \
    libgcc \
    libintl \
    libssl1.1 \
    libstdc++ \
    tzdata \
    userspace-rcu \
    zlib \
    icu-libs \
    curl

sudo apk -X https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main add --no-cache \
    lttng-ust

# Download the powershell '.tar.gz' archive
curl -L https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases/download/v7.4.6/powershell-7.4.6-linux-musl-x64.tar.gz -o /tmp/powershell.tar.gz

# Create the target folder where powershell will be placed
sudo mkdir -p /opt/microsoft/powershell/7

# Expand powershell to the target folder
sudo tar zxf /tmp/powershell.tar.gz -C /opt/microsoft/powershell/7

# Set execute permissions
sudo chmod +x /opt/microsoft/powershell/7/pwsh

# Create the symbolic link that points to pwsh
sudo ln -s /opt/microsoft/powershell/7/pwsh /usr/bin/pwsh

# Start PowerShell
pwsh

Uninstall PowerShell

sudo rm -rf /usr/bin/pwsh /opt/microsoft/powershell

PowerShell paths

$PSHOME is /opt/microsoft/powershell/7/
The profiles scripts are stored in the following locations:
- AllUsersAllHosts - $PSHOME/profile.ps1
- AllUsersCurrentHost - $PSHOME/Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
- CurrentUserAllHosts - ~/.config/powershell/profile.ps1
- CurrentUserCurrentHost - ~/.config/powershell/Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
Modules are stored in the following locations:
- User modules - ~/.local/share/powershell/Modules
- Shared modules - /usr/local/share/powershell/Modules
- Default modules - $PSHOME/Modules
PSReadLine history is recorded in ~/.local/share/powershell/PSReadLine/ConsoleHost_history.txt

The profiles respect PowerShell's per-host configuration, so the default host-specific profiles exists at Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1 in the same locations.

PowerShell respects the XDG Base Directory Specification on Linux.

Supported versions

Microsoft supports PowerShell until PowerShell reaches end-of-support or the version of Alpine reaches end-of-life.

Docker images containing PowerShell 7.4 and PowerShell 7.5-preview for x64 are available from the Microsoft Artifact Registry for the following versions of Alpine:

Alpine 3.17 - OS support ends on 2024-11-22

Docker images of PowerShell aren't available for Alpine 3.18, 3.19, and 3.20.

Important

The Docker images are built from official operating system (OS) images provide by the OS distributor. These images may not have the latest security updates. Microsoft recommends that you update the OS packages to the latest version to ensure the latest security updates are applied.

Installation support

Microsoft supports the installation methods in this document. There may be other methods of installation available from other third-party sources. While those tools and methods may work, Microsoft can't support those methods.

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