LocalConfigurationManager{ DebugMode = $true }

One issue that I ran into when writing my custom DSC resources is that the local resource manager would cache the modules I was working on. It took me a while to realize that was going on. That is when I discovered DebugMode for the local resource manager.

If you enable debug mode, then it will reload the module every time. This is off by default for performance reasons. You have to use a DSC configuration to configure this, but it is done in a slightly different way than normal DSC configurations. Technet has all the details on how to configure the local resource manager. That is where I pulled this sample code from.

If all you want to do is enable debug mode, here is the quick script to do that:

Configuration ExampleConfig
{
    Node "localhost"
    {
        LocalConfigurationManager
        {
            DebugMode = $true
        }
    }
}

# The following line invokes the configuration and creates a file called localhost.meta.mof at the specified path
ExampleConfig -OutputPath "c:\users\public\dsc"

# Notice the use of Set-DSCLocalConfigurationManager
Set-DscLocalConfigurationManager -Path "c:\users\public\dsc"

If you are not using WMF5 CTP Release, then you have to fall back on killing the process hosting DSC. Here is a quick script to do that:

# find the Process that is hosting the DSC engine
$dscProcessID = Get-WmiObject msft_providers | 
  Where-Object {$_.provider -like 'dsccore'} | 
  Select-Object -ExpandProperty HostProcessIdentifier 

# Kill it
Get-Process -Id $dscProcessID | Stop-Process