Monday, October 20, 2014

PowerShell Version 5 in Windows 10 Preview

Like a lot of people, I’ve downloaded and been playing with the previews of Windows 10 (client and server). About the first thing I did was to check out PowerShell and was delighted to find it contains a very late drop of the PowerShell V5 code – marginally later than the WMF Preview shipped in September.

My Server 2012R2 workstation, which has the September V5 drop reports:

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Meanwhile, in the Windows 10 Server preview, we see:

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As you can see, Windows 10 has a slightly newer version of PowerShell V5. The release notes don’t clarify what has changed, but I’d have expected the 9841 to be just a bug fixed fork of 9814.

This new version of PowerShell brings some big changes, not least of which is the improvements and enhancements to Desired State Configuration – no doubt this will feature large in the eventual launch of Windows 10 Server (Server 2015??).

But there are also a bunch of smaller changes that I also am very keen to see go mainstream. These include:

  • Archive (.ZIP file) cmdlets
  • Changes to –item noun to enable symbolic links
  • The ability to develop classes (and enums) using PowerShell
  • Improvements in DSC authoring within the ISE
  • PowerShell transcripts within the ISE
  • Better script tracing

PowerShell V5 looks like being a block buster! I’ll be writing blog articles about each of these new features along with some usage of them for your delight!

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