Today I wanted to setup my PowerShell $PROFILE to make it easier to work with all the modules I learned about at the PowerShell Summit. I wanted to add an additional path to the environment variable $PSModulePath. Something that should be a picece of cake.
I store additional modules in the folder ‘Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules’ under my userdirectory (C:\Users\Joakim). So simply joining the path using Join-Path and add the result to $ENV:PSModulePath should do the trick:
Unfortunately that didn’t work. And it confused me. Executing this on the PowerShell commandline worked fine, but when I put the line above in my $PROFILE it gave me this error:
At C:\Users\Joakim\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1:3 char:44
+ $env:PSModulePath += ';'+ (Join-Path -Path ${env:HOME} -ChildPath 'Do ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidData: (:) [Join-Path], ParameterBindingValidationException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : ParameterArgumentValidationErrorNullNotAllowed,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.JoinPathCommand
I understand what the error says and apparently the environment variable HOME is not instantiated when the $PROFILE is executed. This really confuses me. I already have the following line in my profile and it workes like a charm:
So environment variables are available when $PROFILE is executing… After a bit of frustration I changed from using
to using
and then it works!
So a word of advise if you want to find the users homedirectory when in the context of $PROFILE. Do not use $env:HOME
If anyone can explan when the HOME variable is instatiated vs the USERPROFILE… I’m listening 😉