To do the signing you can use the Set-AuthenticodeSignature
cmdlet. This, of course, requires a certificate. If you have a Certificate Authority (unlikely) that will be able to create a code signing certificate. Otherwise there are various tools to create a self-signed certificate.
You install the certificate in your certificate store (open the .cer
or .pfx
file in Windows Explorer to do this), and then pass it to Set-AuthenticodeSignature
(the cert:
provider/drive gives access to certificates in your store).
Use
help about_signing
or the online version of that help topic for details (including creating a self-signed certificate using the Windows SDK tools[1]).
[1] I assume this is the big download you're referring to: you can just install the bits you need, or make use of other tools (OpenSSL includes certificate generation). Getting the SDK is, for this purpose, a one-off activity.
I'm accepting this answer and assuming that there is no shortcut and signing just needs to be done as mentioned in the docs. – Ville Koskinen – 2010-01-19T12:30:23.553
1Like quite a few "developer-y" things the initial set up and learning is hard, but the actual practice (especially if done regularly) isn't. – Richard – 2010-01-20T10:31:12.970