Installing Microsoft Desired State Configuration (DSC)

Before you get started, you need the actual CLI to work with. For that, you need to install DSC on your machine. In the following sections, you can find instructions on how to install it on Windows, Linux, or macOS.

Installing DSC for Windows manually from GitHub

To install DSC for Windows from GitHub, follow these steps:

Step 1 - Determine your OS architecture

There are multiple methods for determining the operating system (OS) architecture. The following three examples demonstrate the use of the command prompt, PowerShell, or msinfo.

1. Open a command prompt and type: echo %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%.
2. Open a PowerShell terminal session and type: [System.Runtime.InteropServices.RuntimeInformation]::OSArchitecture.
3. In your Quick Start menu, type in msinfo32.exe and locate the System Type property in the System Summary.

Step 2 - Download the asset

After determining your OS architecture, proceed to download the release asset from GitHub.

1. Open the following link in your favorite browser.
2. Select the version you want to download and scroll down.
3. Expand the Assets and press the asset relevant to your OS architecture.

4. Save the file to your Downloads folder.

Step 3 - Expand the archive and add to PATH

When the download is finished, you can expand the files to extract them to your application data folder.

1. Right-click the file and select Extract All…
2. Extract the files to C:\Users\<userProfile>\AppData\Local\dsc by replacing the <userProfile> with your profile name.
3. Open a command prompt and type: rundll32.exe sysdm.cpl,EditEnvironmentVariables to open the environment variables.
4. In your user variables, edit your PATH environment variable and include the path C:\Users\<userProfile>\AppData\Local\dsc.

Step 4 - Verify the installation

1. Open a command prompt or PowerShell terminal session.
2. Type dsc --version:

dsc --version

This should return the DSC version installed.

Installing DSC for Windows using PowerShell

To install DSC for Windows using PowerShell, you can run the following commands in a PowerShell terminal session.

Option 1 - Using PSDSC module

To install DSC using the PSDSC module, follow the steps below:

1. Open a PowerShell terminal session.
2. Install the PSDSC module by typing: Install-PSResource -Name PSDSC
3. Execute Install-DscExe in the same terminal session

Option 2 - Use PowerShell script

To install DSC using a PowerShell script, open a PowerShell terminal session and copy and paste the following:

# Define the GitHub repository and the asset pattern to download
$repo = "PowerShell/DSC"
$assetPattern = "dsc-win-.*.zip"

# Get the latest release information from GitHub API
$release = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://api.github.com/repos/$repo/releases/latest"

$assetPattern = if ($env:PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE -eq 'ARM64')
{
  'DSC-*-aarch64-pc-windows-msvc.zip'
}
else
{
  'DSC-*-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip'
}

# Find the asset that matches the pattern
$asset = $release.assets | Where-Object { $_.name -like $assetPattern }

if ($asset)
{
  # Download the asset
  $assetUrl = $asset.browser_download_url
  $downloadPath = Join-Path -Path $env:TEMP -ChildPath $asset.name
  Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $assetUrl -OutFile $downloadPath

  # Define the extraction path
  $extractPath = Join-Path -Path $env:LOCALAPPDATA -ChildPath 'dsc'

  # Create the extraction directory if it doesn't exist
  if (-not (Test-Path -Path $extractPath)) {
    New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $extractPath
  }

  # Extract the downloaded zip file
  if (Get-Command -Name 'Expand-Archive')
  {
    Expand-Archive -Path $downloadPath -DestinationPath $extractPath -Force
  }
  else 
  {
    Add-Type -AssemblyName System.IO.Compression.FileSystem
    [System.IO.Compression.ZipFile]::ExtractToDirectory($downloadPath, $extractPath)
  }

  # Clean up the downloaded zip file
  Remove-Item -Path $downloadPath -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

  # Unblock all files
  Get-ChildItem -Path $extractPath -Recurse | Unblock-File

  # Add to PATH
  $env:PATH += ";$extractPath"

  # Verify the installation
  dsc --version
}

Installing DSC on Linux

To install DSC on Linux, follow these steps:

Step 1 - Download the asset 

1. Open a terminal session.
2. Determine your OS architecture by typing:

uname -m

3. Download the DSC release asset using wget. Replace <version> with the desired version number and <architecture> with your OS architecture (e.g., x86_64):

wget https://github.com/PowerShell/DSC/releases/download/v<version>/DSC-<version>-<architecture>-linux.tar.gz

Step 2 - Extract the archive 

1. Create a directory to extract the files:

mkdir dsc

2. Extract the downloaded tar.gz file to the created directory:

tar -xvzf DSC-<version>-<architecture>-linux.tar.gz -C dsc

Step 3 - Move files to the appropriate location 

1. Move the extracted files to /usr/local/bin/:

sudo mv dsc/* /usr/local/bin/

Step 4 - Update PATH environment variable in .bashrc 

1. Add the DSC path to your ~/.bashrc file:

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin/dsc' >> ~/.bashrc

2. Optionally, reload the ~/.bashrc file to apply the changes:

source ~/.bashrc

Step 5 - Verify the installation 

1. Open a terminal session.
2. Type dsc --version to verify the installation:

dsc --version

This should return the DSC version installed.

Installing DSC on MacOS

To install DSC on MacOS, follow these steps:

Step 1 - Download the asset 

1. Open a terminal session.
2. Download the DSC release asset using curl. Replace <version> with the desired version number and <architecture> with your OS architecture (e.g., x86_64):

curl -L https://github.com/PowerShell/DSC/releases/download/v<version>/DSC-<version>-<architecture>-apple-darwin.tar.gz -o DSC-<version>-<architecture>-apple-darwin.tar.gz

Step 2 - Extract the archive 

1. Create a directory to extract the files:

mkdir dsc

2. Extract the downloaded tar.gz file to the created directory:

tar -xvzf DSC-<version>-<architecture>-apple-darwin.tar.gz -C dsc

Step 3 - Move files to the appropriate location 

1. Move the extracted files to /usr/local/bin/:

sudo mv dsc/* /usr/local/bin/

Step 4 - Update PATH environment variable in .zshrc

1. Add the DSC path to your ~/.zshrc file:

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin' >> ~/.zshrc

2. Optionally, reload the ~/.zshrc file to apply the changes:

source ~/.zshrc

Step 5 - Verify the installation

1. Open a terminal session.
2. Type dsc --version to verify the installation:

dsc --version

This should return the DSC version installed.

Next up

You have now successfully installed DSC on your machine. Explore the following lesson in the navigation section.