Debugging a DSC script for Release Management

When preparing a DSC script for deploying an application using Release Management it is often handy to test and debug that script locally. Nobody writes code that works the first time, right? However, you’ll quickly run into the fact that Release Management does some things slightly different than “vanilla” DSC (for example: .psd1 is not .ps1) and also provides some extra’s, like the $ApplicationPath variable that holds the path to the bits you’re deploying and the configuration of WinRM. Because of this, I found myself using the following workflow:

1. Write DSC script
2. Test and debug locally
3. Configure Release Management with this DSC script
4. Test and debug deployment from Release Management
5. Change DSC script to work from Release Management

I wanted to eliminate step #5 and seriously reduce the time needed for #4.

For that purpose, I have created a PowerShell wrapper script. This script takes the same input parameters…