Creating Command Aliases in PowerShell
- 1 minute readI’ve been using the Docker for Windows beta lately and things have been going rather smoothly. I got tired of typing docker-compose all the time, though, so I dug around a bit and figured out how to create PowerShell aliases to shorten this long command into the much easier dc. MSDN articles aren’t the most readable, though, so I distilled things down to this simple guide.
To start, run the following command from within PowerShell to create your personal PowerShell profile:
new-item -type file -path $profile -force
This will create a file called Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1 in Documents\WindowsPowerShell\. This is the PowerShell-equivalent to ~/.bash_aliases in Linux.
Next, add Set-Alias commands to Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1. The format is:
> Set-Alias alias command-to-alias
For example, here’s how you can create an alias dc for the docker-compose command:
Set-Alias dc docker-compose
Now, whenever you open PowerShell you can type dc up instead of docker-compose up to manage your Compose environment. Pretty simple, right?