The first preview version of Microsoft PowerShell 7.1 for Windows, Linux and macOS

Microsoft has released a new preview version of PowerShell 7.1 - tools for automating the work and scripting language for Windows, Linux and macOS. This version contains features that were not in PowerShell 7.0. The public version of PowerShell 7.0, which was preceded by the PowerShell Core 6.x platform, was released at the beginning of March this year. The PowerShell 7.1 preview includes new modules and tools that the PowerShell team is working on. But there is no guarantee that all this will fall into the regular release of PowerShell 7.1, which should be released a week or two after the release of the .NET 5 platform. This is because, starting with PowerShell 7.0, Microsoft will coordinate the release of new versions of PowerShell with release schedule for new versions of .NET.





Microsoft is working on a preview version of PowerShellGet 3.0, which aims to provide greater usability and to eliminate the dependencies of PackageManagement and Nuget. In addition, in this version, the transition from the PowerShell scripting language to C # will be carried out. The first preview version should appear very soon, it will be published in PowerShell Gallery.

In addition, a new version of the Secrets Management module will be published in the PowerShell Gallery , which supports PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell 7. Microsoft is considering the possibility of including this module in PowerShell 7.1.

Last week, the company releasedthe second preview version of the module, which can be used to manage secret and credentials used to authenticate complex PowerShell scripts in heterogeneous cloud environments.

The module provides a set of cmdlets that allow users to store sensitive data locally, using some kind of secure data storage system, such as the Credential Manager (credential manager of Windows) Windows. This module, through extensions, allows you to work with credentials located in remote repositories. For example - in such as Azure Key Vault.

So far, this module only supports Windows, but Microsoft, in the next preview, plans to add Linux support through the GNOME Keyring service. Later it is planned to add support for macOS Keychain.

Microsoft, in addition, is going to rewrite parts of the PSScriptAnalyzer static code analyzer used for real-time Visual Studio Code linking of PowerShell extensions.

Work continues on PowerShell support in Jupyter Notebooks. This is part of the .NET Interactive project.

Microsoft is exploring approaches to simplifying the installation and updating of PowerShell 7. However, at the moment, it is not planned to include PowerShell 7 in Windows.

In addition, work is underway on improvements to the shell that simplify copying and pasting code fragments from popular system shells in PowerShell.

If we talk about improving the user experience, now we are studying the questions of how you can, using various technologies of input completion, help users enter commands faster. In addition, the problems of providing users with contextual assistance when entering commands, or full help on some system function, are considered. These mechanisms should be beneficial, but at the same time distract the user as little as possible.

Finally, developers want to use more colors in PowerShell. This will help facilitate reading large volumes of output, giving users visual cues. PowerShell 7.1 may include support for colorizing strings.

In addition, developers, as part of a move towards reducing the size of the deployed system, intend to separate the Utility, Management, and Security modules.

In general, it can be noted that Microsoft, approaching the release of PowerShell 7.1, seeks to increase the usability in this environment.