PowerShell 7.1.0 Preview 6 is out

The PowerShell team has introduced a new preview version of PowerShell.  Here is what to expect in the upcoming PowerShell 7.1 platform, and what has already changed in Preview 6.

The preview release of PowerShell 7.1 includes .NET 5 preview 1. Starting with PowerShell 7.0, devs have shifted to align with .NET’s release and support life-cycle more closely. PowerShell 7.1 is expected to become available within a week or two of .NET 5’s release date of winter 2020 and align with their annual release cadence going forward.

What's new in PowerShell 7.1 Preview 6

Breaking Changes

• Rename -FromUnixTime to -UnixTimeSeconds on Get-Date to allow Unix time input (#13084) (Thanks @aetos382!)
• Make $ErrorActionPreference not affect stderr output of native commands (#13361)
• Allow explicitly specified named parameter to supersede the same one from hashtable splatting (#13162)

Engine Updates and Fixes

• Refactor command line parser to do early parsing (#11482) (Thanks @iSazonov!)
• Add support for some .NET intrinsic type converters (#12580) (Thanks @iSazonov!)
• Refresh and enable the ComInterop code in PowerShell (#13304)

Experimental Features

• Add -Runspace parameter to all *-PSBreakpoint cmdlets (#10492) (Thanks @KirkMunro!)

General Cmdlet Updates and Fixes

• Fix error message from new symbolic link missing target (#13085) (Thanks @yecril71pl!)
• Make the parameter args non-nullable in the public ConsoleHost APIs (#13429)
• Add missing dispose for CancellationTokenSource (#13420) (Thanks @Youssef1313!)
• Add the parameter -Paged to Get-Help to support paging (#13374)
• Fix Get-Help not properly displaying if parameter supports wildcards (#13353) (Thanks @ThomasNieto!)
• Update pwsh help for -InputFormat parameter (#13355) (Thanks @sethvs!)
• Declare MIT license for files copied from Roslyn (#13305) (Thanks @xtqqczze!)
• Improve BigInteger casting behaviors (#12629) (Thanks @vexx32!)
• Fix Get-Acl -LiteralPath "HKLM:Software\Classes\*" behavior (#13107) (Thanks @Shriram0908!)
• Add DefaultVisit method to the visitor interface and class (#13258)
• Fix conflicting shorthand switch -s (STA) for pwsh (#13262) (Thanks @iSazonov!)
• Change Read-Host -MaskInput to use existing SecureString path, but return as plain text (#13256)
• Remove ComEnumerator as COM objects using IEnumerator is now supported in .NET 5.0 (#13259)
• Use temporary personal path at Runspace startup when the 'HOME' environment variable is not defined (#13239)
• Fix Invoke-Command to detect recursive call of the same history entry (#13197)
• Change pwsh executable -inputformat switch prefix -in to -inp to fix conflict with -interactive (#13205) (Thanks @iSazonov!)
• Handle WSL filesystem path when analyze security zone of a file (#13120)
• Make other switches mandatory in Split-Path (#13150) (Thanks @kvprasoon!)
• New Fluent Design icon for PowerShell 7 (#13100) (Thanks @sarthakmalik!)
• Fix Move-Item to support cross-mount moves on Unix (#13044)

Tools

• Fix dotnet install errors (#13387)
• Increase the timeout of Windows daily build to 90 minutes (#13354)
• Update the dependabot configuration to version 2 (#13230) (Thanks @RDIL!)
• Fix Test-XUnitTestResults function (#13270) (Thanks @iSazonov!)
• Update .devcontainer to use nightly docker SDK images (#13128)

Tests

• Mark Test-Connection -TraceRoute tests as pending (#13310)

What to expect in PowerShell 7.1

• PowerShellGet 3.0
• Secret Management Module, an extensible abstraction layer in PowerShell for interacting with Secrets and Secrets Vaults, will get Linux support.
• PSScriptAnalyzer 2.0 for better user experience with VSCode-PowerShell and PSEditorServices.
• Improvements made to PowerShell Jupyter Kernel
• Improvements made to platyPS vNext, a PowerShell module that devs currently use to convert PowerShell documentation from markdown to updatable-help.

There are also a number of areas where it is possible to make more improvements and changes, including Installation and Updating, Shell Improvements, Interactive User Experience.

Finally, PowerShell may get a minimal setup, that only includes the parts of PowerShell needed for your scripts. Not only would it take less disk space, but more importantly, a minimal set of code means less patching and security attack surface.

You can download it here:

Download PowerShell 7.1 Preview 5