Microsoft doles out PowerShell 7 preview. It works. People like it. (tr. Even ElReg likes it.)

The Register ^ | May 31, 2019 | Thomas Claburn

[dayglored]

Popular admin tool shifts to .Net Core 3.0 amid talk of future features

Microsoft on Thursday released a preview version of PowerShell 7, its command-line shell and scripting language for administrators. The software was once was limited to Windows but opened up to Linux (including arm64) and macOS three years ago.

Steve Lee, principal software engineering manager, announced the software's availability in conjunction with a roadmap of future features. He said the next preview release will follow in accordance with the established monthly release cadence; preview 2 is expected mid-July.

The full list of changes has been posted on GitHub, a recently purchased estate and code storage facility in the Microsoft empire.

Lee said moving from .Net Core 2.1 to .Net Core 3.0 represents the most notable change, one that improves performance and delivers various new APIs, albeit Windows-focused ones like WPF and WinForms.

Back in 2016, Microsoft open sourced PowerShell, previously available through the Windows-only .NET framework, and made it available through the cross-platform .Net Core framework. As that transition wraps up, the company is working to put the .Net Core version on equal footing with its Windows-focused ancestor.

"A big focus of PowerShell 7 is making it a viable replacement for Windows PowerShell 5.1," said Lee. "This means it must have near parity with Windows PowerShell in terms of compatibility with modules that ship with Windows."

To take advantage of the full range of Windows PowerShell modules, you'll of course need Windows 10 or the equivalent Windows Server.

Looking beyond Windows, however, appears to have briefly pushed PowerShell into the top 50 programming languages in March, as ranked by TIOBE. Since that high-water mark, it has retreated back into its former relative obscurity.

Microsoft, said Lee, is focused on delivering features related to simplifying the secure management of credentials, logging to remote machines, and notification of new versions, which can help with security.

Lee encourages developers to submit RFC for desired features and said there are a number of features he hopes PowerShell developers will be able to deliver as experimental options in future releases including improved default error formatting, control operators for chaining commands, a ubiquitous -OnError {ScriptBlock} parameter, ternary conditionals, null conditional assignment and a parallel For-Each-Object.

Lee also said his team is working to move PowerShell for Azure Functions from preview to general availability.

PowerShell has been Microsoft's favored mechanism for managing Azure services, but with its improvements to Azure Portal, PowerShell has a rival. ®

[dayglored]

Full title:

Microsoft doles out PowerShell 7 preview. It works. People like it. We can't find a reason to be sarcastic about it.

Now, THAT is newsworthy.

[dayglored]

New preview of PowerShell 7... PING!

You can find all the Windows Ping list threads with FR search: just search on keyword "windowspinglist".

[dayglored]

“PowerShell ... It’s not just for Windows any more...”

[SauronOfMordor]

Naturally, Microsoft just had to create its own language, rather than working with any of the existing scripting languages.

[GOPJ]

We can't find a reason to be sarcastic about it.

LOL

[dayglored]

We;;, in their defense, they desperately needed something better than the ancient CMD.EXE, but that would address all their Windows-centric proprietary usage and constructs. Bash is never going to do that for them.

[dinodino]

Of course they did. Rather than use robust, Open Sourced, and time-tested languages, why not make your own garbage? For Microsoft, it’s traditional.

[Chode]

windows had a thing in the release before 95 that let you automate stuff where it made a file of all your mouse commands opening files etc and made it into a .bat file or .cmd file i forget which that was very useful so of course they killed it in 95 but i don’t remember what it was called

[dayglored]

Microsoft released PowerShell in 2006. At that time, Windows was still in the rabid, iron grip of Steve Ballmer's virulent Linux-Hate. No way in hell he would permit anything other than MS-proprietary, Windows-centric software to be part of Windows.

That's not to excuse his position, nor to minimize the awful damage he did to Microsoft in those years. Just to say, we should not be surprised.

Nadella has arguably done more to make Windows healthy in the past 5 years than either Ballmer or Gates did in the prior two decades.

[dayglored]

> ...it made a file of all your mouse commands opening files etc ...

There have been a few such Windows utilities over the years (mostly 3rd party but I think you're right about something from MS in the early 90's). But that was back when you could almost predict where desktop dialog boxes and such would appear. Automating mouse movements and clicks has always been pretty much a crap-shoot.

Back then, I worked for an outfit that produced Windows software and installers, and we tried mightily to automate our test procedures. The best I can say about the mouse automation is "It worked some of the time".

[so_real]

That's nice. But I don't want shiny new things. I want Microsoft to stop building a profile on me, my family, my friends, and my co-workers. I want them to stop targeting us with-and-for advertising. We desire not to be a product they sell to corporations and governments. If they can't do that, then I can't use their shiny new things and I'll stick with my Linux laptop.

[RitchieAprile]

I use PS all the time. I wrote a PS script to do CRUD on SQLLite databases and various other stuff. Anything you can do with a managed .Net program you can do with PS. and you don’t need an install of VS or any other compiler. You can even P/Invoke and reference methods in unmanaged Win32 assemblies from PS.

[minnesota_bound]

I updated 2 laptops of mine yesterday and it took about 4 hours and other maybe 3 hours to download the updates, install, download some more and install. It was slow....
I now have version 1809 of Windows 10 from last October.
Another update showed up this May but my pc says I have the latest. When I can get that I do not know. The other 2 were updated last earlier in the year. I just did not not get the latest. How microsoft determines what I get is unknown.

In windows 10 right click on the Start button> Run then type winver to see what version of Windows you have.

Versions
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-information/

Latest version 1903 - it says just select “Check for updates” but all I get is I have latest.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-information/status-windows-10-1903

[minnesota_bound]

#12 RitchieAprile I am sure you understood all that but it isn’t even Greek to me.... : )

[dayglored]

How MS determines who gets what and when is one of life’s greatest mysteries. They say there’s a method to it, but I have my doubts.

I’m in the same boat as you: I have 1809, and it says that’s the latest.

Like the soup nazi: “No Updates For You!” :-)

[rarestia]

Naturally, Microsoft just had to create its own language, rather than working with any of the existing scripting languages.

PowerShell is .NET. .NET has been around for almost 20 years.