PowerShell 7.1.0 Preview 7 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 7.

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.

Starting with Preview 6, PowerShell 7.1 Preview is available in Microsoft Store.

What's new in PowerShell 7.1 Preview 6

Breaking Changes

• Fix $? to not be $false when native command writes to stderr (#13395)

Engine Updates and Fixes

• Initial work of the subsystem plugin model (for minimal powershell) (#13186)
• Optimize GetSystemLockdownPolicy for non-lockdown scenarios (#13438)

General Cmdlet Updates and Fixes

• Revert "Add the parameter -Paged to Get-Help to support paging (#13374)" (#13519)
• Add support for TLS 1.3 in Web cmdlets (#13409) (Thanks @iSazonov!)
• Add null check for args in CommandLineParser (#13451) (Thanks @iSazonov!)
• Process reparse points for Microsoft Store applications (#13481) (Thanks @iSazonov!)
• Move PSNullConditionalOperators feature out of experimental (#13529)
• Move PSNativePSPathResolution feature out of Experimental (#13522)
• Use field if property does not exist for ObRoot when using PowerShell Direct to container (#13375) (Thanks @hemisphera!)
• Suppress UTF-7 obsolete warnings (#13484)
• Avoid multiple enumerations of an IEnumerable<Expression> instance in Compiler.cs (#13491)
• Change Add-Type -OutputType to not support ConsoleApplication and WindowsApplication (#13440)
• Create warnings when UTF-7 is specified as an encoding (#13430)

Code Cleanup

We thank the following contributors!

@xtqqczze, @tamasvajk

Tools

• vscode: Add editorconfig to recommended extensions (#13537) (Thanks @xtqqczze!)
• Remove the out-dated ZapDisable related code from build.psm1 (#13350) (Thanks @jackerr3!)

Tests

• Disable WMF download link validation test (#13479)

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