Microsoft has announced that its cross-platform automation tool and its PowerShell 7 configuration framework are now generally available.
Available for Windows, macOS and Linux, PowerShell 7 sees Microsoft move from .NET Core 2.x to 3.1, which allows greater backward compatibility with existing Windows PowerShell modules thanks to the resurrection of many .NET Framework APIs. The cross-platform nature of PowerShell 7 means that Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, Debian and other Linux distributions are adopted.
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Joey Aiello, Product Manager for PowerShell, says: “If you have not been able to use PowerShell Core 6.x in the past due to module compatibility issues, this may be the first time that you can take advantage of some of the impressive features we have already delivered since the start of the Core project! “
The complete list of supported operating systems is given as x64 variants of Windows 7, 8.1 and 10, Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2, 2016 and 2019, macOS 10.13+, Red Hat Enterprise Linux ( RHEL) / CentOS 7 +, Fedora 29+, Debian 9+, Ubuntu 16.04+, openSUSE 15+ and Alpine Linux 3.8+. ARM32 and ARM64 versions of Debian and Ubuntu are also supported, as is ARM64 Alpine Linux. Microsoft says that while not officially supported, community-produced packages are available for Arch and Kali Linux.
Aiello highlights some of the new features that can be found in PowerShell 7:
- Pipeline parallelization with ForEach-Object -Parallel
- New operators:
- Ternary operator: one? Before Christ
- Pipeline chain operators: || and &&
- Null conditional operators: ?? and ?? =
- A simplified and dynamic error view and the Get-Error cmdlet for easier error investigation
- A compatibility layer that allows users to import modules into an implicit Windows PowerShell session
- Automatic new version notifications
- The ability to invoke to call DSC resources directly from PowerShell 7 (experimental)
Full details can be found in the PowerShell 7 release notes.
Microsoft is already looking to the future and has a new version in preparation:
We are already working hard on PowerShell 7.1, and you should expect its first preview soon, full of new features and bug fixes that are not quite in 7.0. Stay tuned for a more detailed roadmap blog describing our current surveys and desires for 7.1.
PowerShell 7 is available for download from GitHub, and there is also installation documentation available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
