For development and some related tasks I use PowerShell, of course. – I store the PowerShell scripts in my projects as part of them. They are part of the source code and they are saved in the source control.

If I need to run such a script I start it directly from Solution Explorer in VS2010.

Therefore I’ve set the default “open with…” to “powershell.exe”

If you have done this you can run every “.ps1” script file by double click in Solution Explorer!!

BUT… VS2010 itself is 32bit! – If you start an architecture independend process like “poweshell.exe” from within VS2010 it runs in 32bit environment! But sometimes you need to run a 64 version of PowerShell, e.g. for some SharePoint tasks that need an 64 bit environment.

Therefore I’ve created a little App “StartPS64”:

1. In VS2010 create a new Project of type “Console Application”

2. Open the project’s properties, select the “Build” tab and change “Platform target” to x64.

3. Edit “program.cs” and insert this code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Diagnostics;

namespace StartPS64
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string fullname = System.IO.Path.GetFullPath(args[0]);
            if( !System.IO.File.Exists(fullname) )
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Script does not exist!");
                Console.ReadKey();
                return;
            }

            Process.Start(@"c:windowssystem32windowspowershellv1.0powershell.exe", fullname);
        }
    }
}

4. Compile it.

5. Specify the build “startps64.exe” as new “default application” for “.ps1” files in VS2010 as described above.

6. Now every “.ps1” file started from the Solution Explorer will run in an 64 bit environment and can execute SharePoint cmdlets!