PowerShell

With Buddy, you can create a pipeline that builds, tests, and deploys Windows applications on a push to Git. Use PowerShell scripts to automate deployment tasks like restarting IIS, running migrations, and managing Windows services. The configuration is super simple and takes 10 to 15 minutes.

Image loading... PowerShell pipeline example

Prerequisites

Before setting up your pipeline, you need to ensure that your Windows server has OpenSSH Server installed and configured. The OpenSSH Server must be set up on Windows to allow remote PowerShell execution.

Install OpenSSH Server on Windows

Follow the official Microsoft documentation to install and configure OpenSSH Server:

Get started with OpenSSH Server for Windows

Configure PowerShell as Default Shell

For PowerShell actions to work correctly in OpenSSH, you need to set the default shell to PowerShell. Run the following commands on your Windows server:

powershell
# For PowerShell 7
New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM\SOFTWARE\OpenSSH" -Name DefaultShell -Value "C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7\pwsh.exe" -PropertyType String -Force

# For PowerShell 5
New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM\SOFTWARE\OpenSSH" -Name DefaultShell -Value "C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -PropertyType String -Force

# Restart SSH service
Restart-Service sshd

Warning

Make sure to run these commands as Administrator on your Windows server before configuring the pipeline.

1. Create a new project

Go to Projects and click Create new project. Select your Git hosting provider (Buddy, GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, or Private Server) and enter your project name.

Image loading... Create new project

2. Add a new pipeline

Navigate to Pipelines and click New pipeline. In the form, configure the following:

Name - Enter a descriptive name for your pipeline (e.g., "Deploy to production")
ID - Optional identifier for the pipeline
CPU - Select architecture: x64 or ARM64
Resources per pipeline run - Choose resource allocation (default: Workspace default)
Definition Location - Optionally check "Store configuration in a Git repository" to use YAML files

Click Add pipeline to create it.

Image loading... Add new pipeline

3. Configure workflow: contexts and triggers

After creating the pipeline, go to the Workflow tab to configure:

Image loading... Configure Workflow

Contexts - Click + to add Git branch/tag context or Environment. See Contexts.
Triggers - Click + to add Git events, Schedule, or Webhook. See Workflow Configuration.

4. Add actions

Buddy lets you choose from dozens of predefined actions. In this example, we'll add 4 actions that will perform the following tasks:

Build your .NET application
Upload application files to Windows server
Execute PowerShell deployment scripts to restart services
Send notification to Slack

4.1 Build your .NET application

Success

Build actions in Buddy are run in isolated containers run from official Docker images. When the pipeline is run, Buddy pulls the container, runs build commands, and uploads the results to the pipeline filesystem.

Look up and click .NET on the action list to add it to the pipeline.

Image loading... Action list

The Run tab lets you determine the commands to execute. The default commands are:

bash
dotnet restore
dotnet build
dotnet test
$$$

Image loading... .NET build commands

4.1.2 .NET version

You can change the version of .NET and install missing packages & tools in the runtime environment tab:

Image loading... .NET action image

4.2 Deploy application to Windows server

The compiled .NET application needs to be uploaded to the Windows server. Head to the Deploy tab and select Transfer action. In the action configuration, select your Target (FTPS, FTP, SSH, SFTP, or other protocol) configured for your Windows server:

Image loading... File transfer actions

When adding the action, you can choose what and where should be uploaded:

Image loading... SFTP target

Hint

Targets allow to save pre-configured transfer server settings to be used across multiple actions.

4.3 Execute deployment scripts with PowerShell

After uploading the application, use the PowerShell action to execute deployment scripts directly on your Windows server via SSH connection. This is perfect for tasks like restarting IIS application pools, clearing cache, and managing Windows services.

Enter the commands to execute in Run CMDs and configure authentication details in the Target tab:

powershell
# Restart IIS application pool
Restart-WebAppPool -Name 'MyAppPool'

# Clear application cache
Remove-Item -Path 'C:\inetpub\wwwroot\MyApp\cache\*' -Recurse -Force

Image loading... PowerShell deployment commands

Warning

Make sure your Windows server has OpenSSH Server installed and PowerShell configured as the default shell (see Prerequisites section above).

4.4 Send notification to Slack

You can configure Buddy to send your team a message after the deployment. In this example we'll use Slack:

Image loading... Notification actions

Hint

If you add this action in the On Failure tab, Buddy will only send the message if something goes wrong with your build or deployment.

Image loading... On failure notification

5. Summary

Congratulations! You have just automated your entire delivery process. Make a push to the selected branch and watch Buddy fetch, build, test, and deploy your .NET application. With Continuous Delivery applied, you can now focus on what's really important: developing awesome apps! 🔥

Success

Bear in mind that this article is only a brief example of what Buddy can do. You can create additional pipelines for staging and production environments, integrate with your favorite services (AWS, Google, Azure), trigger tests on pull requests, build Docker images, and push them to the registry—the possibilities are unlimited.

Last modified on Nov 20, 2025

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