Greg.Xrm.Command ⁓ aka PACX 🔧

Overview 💻

PACX is a free to use, open source, command line based, utility belt for Dataverse. It's aim is to extend the capabilities of PAC CLI providing a lot of commands designed by Power Platform Developers to:

• help with the automation of repetitive tasks 🤖
• provide an easy access to hidden gems that are provided by the platform only via API 🫣
• make development and deployment faster and more efficient 🚀

It's also a lot more than that. Built with an XrmToolbox like plugin-based approach in mind, it is also an easy-to-use platform to develop your own tools and extensions.

Installation 🛠️

The tool can be installed as a dotnet global tool using the following command:

dotnet tool install -g Greg.Xrm.Command

To update the tool to a newer version

dotnet tool update -g Greg.Xrm.Command

Usage 🚀

You can get the list of the available commands by running:

pacx --help

• For the full list of commands please visit the wiki section of the current repository.
• For articles, how-tos, tutorials, or real life usage examples follow my LinkedIn profile or my dev.to page.
• Take a look on episode 107 of XrmToolCast where I've had a really interesting conversation with Scott Durow and Daryl LaBar about PACX aim, capabilities, and potentials.

Interactive mode 🖥️

PACX can also be used in interactive mode, which allows you to run multiple commands in a cli-style UI. To start PACX in interactive mode, simply run:

pacx --interactive

Interactive mode provides the following features:

• Command tree navigation (downwards and upwards)
• Search the list of commands and namespaces
• Execute commands directly from the interactive mode
• Inline help for commands and namespaces
• On demand help for command options (via /?)
• Colorized output for better readability

Extensions 🧩

You can extend PACX capabilities in 2 different ways:

• 🌟 Extending the PACX core features
• 📦 Creating your own Tools: a tool is a set of PACX commands packaged in a single dll file that can be deployed locally for single use scenarios, or can be made available to the community via NuGet. Follow the instructions provided by the wiki page linked above to learn how to build, package and deploy your PACX Tools. This is the preferred approach to add context specific commands.

If you have created an interesting Plugin and you want to spread the word to the community, 🗣️ reach out to me and I'll be glad to sponsor the tool in my pages!

Core Contributors 👨🏻‍💻

• Riccardo Gregori (@_neronotte)
• Simone Giubbarelli (@SimonGiubs)
• Francesco Catino (@reloweb)
• Giorgio Ripamonti (@StoyAva)
• Emidio Santoro