PowerShell 7 - Release Candidate 2 has shipped

So there I was, totally relaxed after a lovely yoga class, and at home when Twitter, well actually Steve Lee via Twitter, informed the world that RC2 had shipped. My immediate reaction was, weall as expected, to download/install it NOW!

The Install-PowerShell command from GitHub installs PowerShell for Linux, Mac, and Windows.  You can also use it to download the RTM version as well as Preview version such as Release Candidate 2. I  saved it locally and run it more or less daily to get the latest daily build. 

So what IS as Release Candidate?. In theory, an RC is a set of software that should be the final version except for some bugs. The idea of an RC is to test it and to find those bugs before the final release.; Again, in theory, an RC build should be feature complete - but sometimes 'fixes' do rather look like new features. But for the most part, RC2 is what PowerShell 7 is going to be, minus a few bugs. 

And why does this RC matter? Well - for almost all IT pros (at least Windows IT Pros), Windows PowerShell has been a core tool for a decade. For many, if not most of you, PowerShell 7 is an upgraded replacement tool. It is now fully supported in Production and is really the future of PowerShell. EVERY IT Pro that presently uses Windows PowerShell should take a close look. Speaking personally, I now use  PowerShell 7 for just about everything.

If you are an IT Pro, and if you use Windows PowerShell now. With so many neat new features, you are likely to be pleased, even if you can, today, use PowerShell 7 for everything.

Background Jobs in PowerShell 7

The PowerShell background jobs feature allows you to run scripts or script blocks in the background. You use the Start-Job command to start a job, and Get-Job ane Receive-Job to view jobs and to get the output of a job.

With PowerShell 7, you have the option of running a job using either PowerShell 7 (ie the default) or using Windows PowerShell 5.1. You indicate it using the -PSVersion parameter and specifying "5.1". Such jobs then run under Windows PowerShell, which can be useful if you are using PowerShell 7 but have scripts that are not yet compatible (eg using WSUS). You can kick off these scripts using background jobs, have that script run in Windows PowerShell, and then incorporate the results in a PowerShell 7 script.

Here's an example:

In this screenshot, you see I am running this in today's build of the day. I then run a simple job and view the job results. By default, PowerShell runs the script in the same version of PowerShell (ie today's daily build). Then I ran that same script but explicitly asked for Window PowerShell 5.1, what the results you can see.

This is a nice feature to assist with backwards compatibility. PowerShell 7 provides great forward compatibility but it's not yet a perfect replacement for Windows PowerShell. Features like this provide a great workaround when a command is not supported natively. 

Planet PowerShell - A New PowerShell Resource

As I am sure you know, the Interweb contains a great deal of excellent PowerShell related content. The question is, how do you find it?

If you know what you are looking for, today's search engines are pretty awesome. I use Google and Bing a lot. In my training, I encourage 'Google Engineering' as a way to be successful with PowerShell. Search engines are outstanding, so long as you know what you are looking for.

But what if you just want to learn more?  Planet PowerShell is a community web site that aggregates blog posts from around the internet. the URL for the home page is: https://www.planetpowershell.com/. And it looks like this:

From this landing page, you can click on the Preview Button to bring up the most recent postsm like this:

From this page, you can click on the View Original Post button to view the post 

Also, if you are on Twitter, you can follow the site's Twitter feed by following  @planetpshell. That feed looks like this:

This is a great resource to help you to learn more!