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Managing TortoiseSVN commit and update from command line and creating PowerShell alias

I started to using PowerShell in my development environment simply to learn it a little bit more (though I’m still using the old command from cmd or UNIX) and also to get out of the stone aged cmd. And because I’m using the console a lot – yep, I get used to it on UNIX/Linux machines with terminal access) I was not happy to open explorer just to issue commit or update to/from SVN (these are most common commands I’m using, together with diff in commit window).

And happily TortoiseSVN has a utility to manage most of the basic tasks. It’s called TortoiseProc. To do commit or update in current directory, you’ll simply execute:

tortoiseproc /command:commit /path:.

or

tortoiseproc /command:update /path:.

For a while I was happy with it. But typing it everytime or looking into history (I wish cmd/PS had Ctrl+R as bash has) was not perfect for me. So I started looking for a way to create alias in PowerShell. Some kind of alias. PowerShell, sure, has something like this, I thought. And it has – Set-Alias. Though, limited. If you try to create alias to command with hardcoded parameters, …

set-alias commit "tortoiseproc /command:commit /path:."

… as I was trying, you’ll not succeed. After some searching and trying I found and an idea from Andrew Watt using a function (yes, I’m a PowerShell newbie). It’s easy and convenient to wrap the command into it.

So finally I create PowerShell aliases for TortoiseSVN to nicely support my work from command line:

set-alias update fn_update
set-alias commit fn_commit
function fn_update {tortoiseproc /command:update /path:.}
function fn_commit {tortoiseproc /command:commit /path:.}