Boxstarter hacking (pt. 1)

So I have been trying out Boxstarter on few new machines (VM’s). It is a glorious tool.
However, in my pursuit to keep the process lean, and not duplicate code i have made some “partial” Boxstarter scripts, which include some common functionality. As an example i have a domainjoin.txt (I'm using .txt extensions for easy editing) that looks like this:

if ($host.version.major -lt 3 )  
{
    cinst PowerShell
    invoke-reboot
} else{
    Write-host "Good got powershell with version higher than 3"
}

#Check if this workstation is a domain member, taken from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa394102(v=vs.85)
$computer = Get-WMIObject win32_computersystem
$memberStatus = ($computer).domainrole
$domainName = "domain.local"

if ($memberStatus -eq 0 -or $memberStatus -eq 2)  
{
    $newname = read-host "Please supply a newname"
    Write-host "Good choice :) "
    write-host $newname
    #Prompt the user to select whether to join the domain
    $title = "Join $domainName domain?"
    $message = "Would you like to join this computer $($env:computername) (newname: $newname) to the domain $domainName?"
    $yes = New-Object System.Management.Automation.Host.ChoiceDescription "&Yes", `
        "Select 1 to join this computer $($env:computername) (newname: $newname) to the domain $domainName."
    $no = New-Object System.Management.Automation.Host.ChoiceDescription "&No", `
        "Select 2 to NOT join this computer $($env:computername) (newname: $newname) to the domain $domainName."
    $options = [System.Management.Automation.Host.ChoiceDescription[]]($yes, $no)
    $deploymentOption = $host.ui.PromptForChoice($title, $message, $options, 0)

    if ($deploymentOption -eq 0)
    {
    $cred = Get-Credential
        #Add the computer to the domain if it's a 'Standalone Workstation' (0) or 'Standalone Server' (2) only
        Add-Computer -DomainName $domainName -NewName $newname -Credential $cred
        #Add 'Domain Users' to the Local Administrators group on the computer
        #$group = [ADSI]"WinNT://./Administrators,group"
        #$group.Add("WinNT://$domainName/Domain Users,group")

        if (Test-PendingReboot){Invoke-Reboot}
    }
} 

Set-WindowsExplorerOptions -EnableShowHiddenFilesFoldersDrives -EnableShowProtectedOSFiles -EnableShowFileExtensions  
Enable-remotedesktop

This will actually bring Powershell up to the latest version available in chocolatey (which is of this writing is 3.0.20121027) and join the computer to the domain, given a user entered name. This is not totally ideal in our shop but will do for now, when I’m the only user of this system :)

With this script I could do another script which will, say, prep a developer machine. This could look something like this: 

#get the domainjoin.txt and include in script

#install different packages

for now this looks like this: 

invoke-boxstarter {(new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('http://path/to/domainjoin.txt') | iex}

cinst notepadplusplus  
cinst procexp  
cinst baretail  
cinst fiddler4

However this invokes Boxstarter AGAIN, and this is, in my mind, less than desirable, as one suddenly have multiple instances of Boxstarter running. This may be the direction that is the correct one.

I have asked the Boxstarter guru’s at codeplex to see if they have a opinion about it.

I have been surfing around the web, and found some interesting ways to include a script within another and this may be what it comes down to, my understanding of powershell and the organizing of powershell scripts.