Visual Studio Code > Programming Languages > PowerShell > Changelog

PowerShell Extension Release History

v2025.1.0-preview

Thursday, January 16, 2025

With PowerShell Editor Services v4.2.0!

VS Code engine update and snippet fix

See more details at the GitHub Release for v2025.1.0-preview.

v2024.5.2-preview

Wednesday, December 04, 2024

With PowerShell Editor Services v4.1.0!

Bug fixes and build improvements.

See more details at the GitHub Release for v2024.5.2-preview.

v2024.5.1-preview

Monday, November 18, 2024

With PowerShell Editor Services v4.0.0!

Drop support for PowerShell <7.4 and logging overhaul

PowerShell 7.2 LTS and 7.3 are now past end-of-support and are now unsupported. This is an incompatible API change so we're bumping the major version of PowerShell Editor Services. Please update to PowerShell 7.4 LTS going forward.

This release contains a logging overhaul which purposely removes our dependency on Serilog and should lead to improved stability with PowerShell 5.1 (by avoiding a major GAC assembly conflict).

See more details at the GitHub Release for v2024.5.1-preview.

v2024.4.0

Monday, November 04, 2024

With PowerShell Editor Services v3.21.0!

Call-operator support and various bug fixes.

See more details at the GitHub Release for v2024.4.0.

v2024.5.0-preview

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

With PowerShell Editor Services v3.21.0!

Call-operator support and various bug fixes.

See more details at the GitHub Release for v2024.5.0-preview.

v2024.2.2

Friday, May 03, 2024

With PowerShell Editor Services v3.20.1!

Update third-party notices.

See more details at the GitHub Release for v2024.2.2.

v2024.2.1

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

With PowerShell Editor Services v3.20.0!

Hotfix for incorrect signing certificate, sorry about that!

Also removed Plaster integration as we were unable to correctly sign it since we no longer own it.

See more details at the GitHub Release for v2024.2.1.

v2024.2.0

Monday, April 08, 2024

With PowerShell Editor Services v3.19.0!

New stable release!

This release comes with PSReadLine v2.4.0-beta0 and PSScriptAnalyzer v1.22.0.

It includes an overhauled support for Terminal Shell Integration, so it always supports VS Code's latest features!

The codebase was cleaned up by the removal of several deprecated features. Multiple bugs were fixed in the shutdown process, default debugger configurations and IntelliSense. A setting was added to allow the exclusion of the execution policy CLI argument at startup, so that users in restricted environments are better able to launch the extension.

This release went through three pre-releases. Thank you so much to all our beta testers and users for your contributions.

See more details at the GitHub Release for v2024.2.0.

v2024.3.2-preview

Wednesday, April 03, 2024

With PowerShell Editor Services v3.19.0!

Overhauled Terminal Shell Integration!

See more details at the GitHub Release for v2024.3.2-preview.

v2024.3.1-preview

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.18.0

v2024.3.0-preview

Thursday, January 25, 2024

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.17.0

v2024.0.0

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Happy New Year! This stable release includes a bunch if improvements to the LSP server, PowerShell Editor Services and comes with a major upgrade to our testing system. Please see the below changelog! Going forward we plan to release on a quarterly basis. Thanks for being such fantastic users!

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.14.0-v3.16.0

v2024.1.0-preview

Wednesday, January 03, 2024

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.16.0

v2023.11.1-preview

Thursday, December 07, 2023

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.15.0

v2023.11.0-preview

Tuesday, November 07, 2023

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.14.0

v2023.8.0

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

This one took a while! As always, these changes were available in the pre-release channel which went through six versions to get us to today's release.

The cwd setting now supports ~ for home directory, relative paths, and named workspace folders. The additionalPowerShellExes setting also now supports ~, checks for missing extensions if necessary, and both settings smartly strip surrounding quotes from the user-supplied value. These two settings are now far more user-friendly.

Thanks to efforts across the team, we are shipping the extension with the latest and greatest PSReadLine, v2.3.4!

The extension commands AKA $psEditor API was reworked and no longer mangles path casing. It also now exposes the CloseFile and SaveFile methods, and supports multi-root workspaces.

A new setting integratedConsole.startLocation was added to control the Extension Terminal's starting position. Thanks @krishankanumuri!

To wrap things up, another crash when $ErrorActionPreference = "stop" was resolved. A race condition for the language status item's name and icon was fixed. Our telemetry went down after a package upgrade which required a cross-team effort to resolve (it's now also cleaned up to send just what we're using). The DSC breakpoints capability now works as intended without causing module load errors or emitting "sticky" progress information. A bug when the log level was set to None broke the server was fixed. Our server's major dependency, OmniSharp's csharp-language-server-protocol, was updated to v0.19.9 which means we can now use the current LSP spec v3.17. We had to work with the project to resolve a serialization regression. Finally, a lot of various build improvements were made.

Please note the change in our versioning schema: the middle version number no longer corresponds to the month, but is simply incremented. Even versions are stable, and odd versions are pre-release, with the latter purposefully being versioned higher than the former in order to keep both channels available in the Visual Studio Code marketplace.

Thanks to all the many community contributors whose efforts make releases such as these possible!

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.13.0

v2023.9.5-preview

Tuesday, October 10, 2023

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.13.0

v2023.9.4-preview

Friday, September 29, 2023

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.12.0

Just updating the client above.

v2023.9.3-preview

Thursday, September 28, 2023

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.12.0

v2023.9.2-preview

Wednesday, September 13, 2023

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.11.0

v2023.9.1-preview

Friday, August 25, 2023

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.10.0

v2023.9.0-preview

Wednesday, August 09, 2023

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.9.0

v2023.6.0

Tuesday, June 06, 2023

This release focused on fixing the "disappearing output" bug present in PowerShell 5.1, where an old bug with the Out-Default cmdlet's TranscribeOnly flag could cause the Extension Terminal to stop displaying output. While the root cause in the cmdlet is fixed upstream, that fix is only in PowerShell Core, and not backported to Windows PowerShell. We were able to workaround the bug with a very careful use of reflection to reset the flag's value at the appropriate times (see the three takes it took to get this right).

We also refactored the client's startup logic so that it should be impossible to create a ghost Extension Terminal, and the error handling and logging was given a thorough cleanup. Finally, two noisy bugs were fixed: when completions are canceled the useless error message is no longer produced, and when the DSC module is only loaded in one attempt instead of repeatedly.

Please enjoy these bugfixes! We sure enjoy making the extension more stable.

Don't forget to catch Andy's talk, "PowerShell Extension for VS Code Deep Dive" at PSConfEU on Thursday, 22 June 2023!

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.8.7

v2023.5.4-preview

Tuesday, May 30, 2023

vscode-powershell

No changes, just pulling in PSES.

PowerShellEditorServices v3.8.7

v2023.5.3-preview

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.8.6

No changes.

v2023.5.2-preview

Tuesday, May 23, 2023

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.8.6

v2023.5.1-preview

Friday, May 12, 2023

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.8.5

v2023.5.0

Wednesday, May 03, 2023

This release focused on include Justin Grote's new "attach .NET debugger" debug configuration for binary PowerShell modules, and on handling start-up failures more gracefully. If the start-up fails because the configured PowerShell is out-of-date, instead of a confusing "undefined" error message we now detect the problem, inform the user with a pop-up message of it, and offer to open the installation and/or update instructions.

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.8.4

v2023.4.1-preview

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.8.4

v2023.4.0-preview

Wednesday, April 12, 2023

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.8.3

  • No update.

v2023.3.3

Thursday, March 30, 2023

This is primarily a bug-fix focused release, and we want to say thanks to all our loyal preview extension users! The "PowerShell Preview" extension has now been officially deprecated, with "preview" releases now available via the "pre-release" option on the stable "PowerShell" extension in the marketplace. While you should be migrated automatically, feel free to just uninstall the preview and install the now one-and-only extension, but please keep testing our pre-releases! This change makes it much simpler to use, as you no longer have to switch between two different extensions and instead can use VS Code's marketplace to install your choice of version!

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.8.3

v2023.3.2-preview

Monday, March 27, 2023

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.8.3

  • Documentation update and CI fix.

v2023.3.1-preview

Wednesday, March 15, 2023

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.8.2

No changes.

v2023.3.0-preview

Thursday, March 09, 2023

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.8.2

v2023.2.1

Thursday, February 23, 2023

vscode-powershell

Primarily an update to v3.8 of PowerShell Editor Services, as previewed over February. Includes a massive enhancement to extension's symbol support, nearly completing the Consistent References project, with the final work in an upcoming preview. Enjoy!

PowerShellEditorServices v3.8.1

In the PR below we rewrote all the symbol logic. Classes (and their properties and methods) are now proper symbols. Instead of a dozen similar-yet-different Abstract Symbol Tree (AST) PowerShell script visitors handling different parts of each symbol-related request, we have a single visitor that builds a cached dictionary of symbols for each file. This was a massive simplification of the code that also leads to huge performance improvements across all the symbol related features:

Please try it out and give us feedback! There's plenty of room for more improvement, and this will be much easier going forward.

v2023.2.1-preview

Monday, February 13, 2023

vscode-powershell

Includes the updates from PowerShell Editor Services below:

PowerShellEditorServices v3.8.1

v2023.2.0-preview

Thursday, February 02, 2023

vscode-powershell

This preview includes all the work outlined below for enhanced symbol support.

PowerShellEditorServices v3.8.0

In the PR below we rewrote all the symbol logic. Classes (and their properties and methods) are now proper symbols. Instead of a dozen similar-yet-different Abstract Symbol Tree (AST) PowerShell script visitors handling different parts of each symbol-related request, we have a single visitor that builds a cached dictionary of symbols for each file. This was a massive simplification of the code that also leads to huge performance improvements across all the symbol related features:

Please try it out and give us feedback! There's plenty of room for more improvement, and this will be much easier going forward.

v2023.1.0

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

First stable release for the new year, includes a multitude of fixes for the debugger! Expanding variables with properties that are inaccessible no longer causes a short-circuit preventing the rest of the properties from being expanded, variable values whose expansion results in PowerShell code being executed now works as expected, and in general all the correct properties are now present. We look forward to adding the ability to view static and private fields in a future update.

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.7.3

v2023.1.0-preview

Wednesday, January 04, 2023

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.7.3

v2022.12.2-preview

Tuesday, December 20, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.7.2

v2022.12.1

Thursday, December 15, 2022

This release brings a variety of bugfixes and feature improvements, including everyone's favorite: VS Code Terminal Shell Integration in the PowerShell Extension Terminal! We overhauled the PowerShell update notification feature, with support for more platforms and architectures. Also checkout the revamped settings descriptions in VS Code, complete with formatting and hyperlinks.

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.7.1

v2022.12.1-preview

Monday, December 12, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.7.1

v2022.12.0-preview

Tuesday, December 06, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.7.0

v2022.11.2-preview

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

vscode-powershell

Just dependency updates.

PowerShellEditorServices v3.6.3

v2022.11.1-preview

Monday, November 21, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.6.2

v2022.11.0

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

The November release represents a renewed focus on the client, that is, the TypeScript extension for Visual Studio Code. We've paid back a significant amount of technical debt by enabling both the TypeScript compiler's and ESLint linter's strict checks, helping us ensure we are writing correct code. We've increased the client's logging, made the walkthrough's installation instructions cross-platform, added a warning popup when custom configured additional PowerShell executables aren't found, and fixed a couple debugger configuration edge cases.

A regression for the OnIdle handler was fixed in the server, complete with regression tests covering the registration and triggering of idle events registered both in a profile and during a session. A workaround was implemented for a completion bug in PowerShell that was causing the LSP session to disconnect when used with third-party clients. When executing scripts, the path is now escaped with single quotes instead of double quotes, addressing the edge case where a path contains a dollar sign, and is now inline with PowerShell's semantics.

The build is now correctly published in release mode which should be more performant and won't allow the user to accidentally enable the "wait for debugger" scenario (which can appear as a hang, though it is a correctly working feature that is now hidden behind more developer settings). Additionally, checks were added to both the server and client build pipelines to assert that the bits are in release mode before packaging, as it was unfortunately the act of running the tests that erroneously and silently overwrote release bits with debug bits.

Finally, a long-standing bug that often prevented the server from starting with Windows PowerShell was resolved. Known to users as the DryIoc error (which was a misleading stacktrace that commonly popped up), we tracked down a broken dependency of OmniSharp that when present and loaded into the GAC caused a type resolution error. While it took a year for us to find the root cause, the fix was a single line dependency update for OmniSharp, and then some work to incorporate the OmniSharp update into the server.

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.6.1

v2022.11.0-preview

Thursday, November 03, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.6.1

v2022.10.2-preview

Tuesday, October 25, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.6.0

v2022.10.0

Thursday, October 20, 2022

This October stable release incorporates a number of bugfixes throughout September and early October, though is not based on the latest preview, v2022.10.1-preview, as the refactors involved in enabling TypeScript's strict type checking and ESLint's strict linting will need more testing. However, based on the success of the PowerShell Script Analyzer's v1.21.0 release we wanted to get this to you sooner!

Highlighted bugfixes include: supporting events registered to PowerShell's OnIdle handler so that Azure cmdlets such as Az.Tools.Predictor now work, a lock around the client's start() so the extension terminal cannot accidentally be spawned multiple times, and making the default debug configurations not override your current working directory (by unsetting cwd on all of them).

In addition to fixing bugs, we also reintroduced a fan-favorite feature: the PowerShell Language Status Icon will visually indicate if the execution pipeline is busy. For example, a long-running task in the PowerShell Extension Terminal or a launched editor command will show a spinner!

Finally, I wanted to call out work by Patrick to significantly improve the performance of reference finding (which powers the reference code lenses), so large workspaces can now be used more easily. If these performance improvements are still not enough for a particular workspace, we also introduced two new settings to fine-tune the feature:

  • powershell.analyzeOpenDocumentsOnly when enabled will only search for references within open documents
  • powershell.enableReferencesCodeLens can be used to disable reference finding without having to turn off other code lenses

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.5.4

v2022.10.1-preview

Monday, October 17, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.5.4

No changes.

v2022.10.0-preview

Friday, October 07, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.5.4

No changes.

v2022.9.2-preview

Friday, September 30, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.5.4

v2022.9.1-preview

Wednesday, September 28, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.5.3

v2022.9.0-preview

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.5.2

v2022.8.5

Tuesday, August 30, 2022

This release incorporates all the changes since v2022.7.2, first tested across six previews. Thanks for using PowerShell in VS Code!

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.5.1

v2022.8.5-preview

Thursday, August 25, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.5.1

v2022.8.4-preview

Friday, August 19, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.5.0

No update.

v2022.8.3-preview

Thursday, August 18, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.5.0

v2022.8.2-preview

Friday, August 12, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.4.10

  • Just dependency updates.

v2022.8.1-preview

Thursday, August 11, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.4.9

v2022.8.0-preview

Wednesday, August 03, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.4.8

v2022.7.2

Friday, July 29, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.4.7

v2022.7.2-preview

Tuesday, July 26, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices v3.4.7

No changes.

v2022.7.1-preview

Monday, July 25, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.7.0-preview

Monday, July 11, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.6.3

Wednesday, June 30, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.6.3-preview

Wednesday, June 29, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.6.2-preview

Wednesday, June 22, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.6.1

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

vscode-powershell

New stable release with all changes below since v2022.5.1:

PowerShellEditorServices

Includes v3.4.3 with all changes below since v3.3.5:

v2022.6.1-preview

Monday, June 13, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.5.5-preview

Friday, May 20, 2022

vscode-powershell

No changes.

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.5.4-preview

Thursday, May 19, 2022

vscode-powershell

No changes.

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.5.3-preview

Thursday, May 19, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

No changes.

v2022.5.2-preview

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

vscode-powershell

  • 🐛 🛫 vscode-powershell #3986 - Pass EnableProfileLoading and InitialWorkingDirectory as initializationOptions.
  • ✨ 📺 vscode-powershell #3976 - Add warning about intellisense to PSIC terminate dialog. (Thanks @JustinGrote!)

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.5.1

Friday, May 06, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.5.0

Tuesday, May 03, 2022

vscode-powershell

Welcome to the new and improved PowerShell for Visual Studio Code!

This update represents a complete overhaul of the core PowerShell engine of PowerShell Editor Services, intending to create a more reliable and stable user experience. This release represents nearly two years' work, tracked in PSES #1295 and implemented in PSES #1459. It is our response to many issues opened by users over the last several years.

Thank you to all of the community members who opened issues which helped motivate this major update.

These major updates have also been tested over the last 6 months, in 13 releases of our PowerShell Preview extension for Visual Studio Code. A huge thank you to all of the community members who have tested these changes to the extension and have worked with us to polish the extension before releasing it through our stable channel.

Please see our blog for more details!

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.5.0-preview

Monday, May 02, 2022

vscode-powershell

Fourth Release Candidate! Thanks for finding bugs and helping us squash them!

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.4.3-preview

Thursday, April 28, 2022

Third Release Candidate. Our recent debugger and ReadKey overhauls revealed some other bugs that needed squashing! Please test this thoroughly. We're gaining confidence!

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.4.2-preview

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

vscode-powershell

Just including updates to PowerShell Editor Services. This is the second Release Candidate! Please give it a thorough test.

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.4.1-preview

Monday, April 18, 2022

This is our first Release Candidate. We've merged a set of major fixes to the debugger so that attaching to remote processes / runspaces now works again. While the extension is not perfect (yet), we believe at this point the preview far exceeds the stable extension in terms of usability and stability, and it is time to roll this out. Please give this a thorough testing, as we hope to roll it into the stable extension next week.

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.4.0-preview

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

We delayed moving the preview branch to stable in order to fix issues surrounding our ReadKey / ReadLine logic. This preview contains a new minor release of PowerShell Editor Services with an entire rewrite of that logic, utilizing what we hope is a much better workaround for the underlying issue in .NET's Console.ReadKey. Please give this release a thorough testing, especially in the console with PSReadLine.

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.3.1-preview

Thursday, March 24, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.3.0-preview

Thursday, March 10, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.2.2-preview

Thursday, February 24, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.2.1-preview

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

vscode-powershell

  • ️⃣ 🙏 vscode-powershell #3824 - Add known PowerShell.OnIdle event bug to troubleshooting.md. (Thanks @StevenBucher98!)

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.2.0-preview

Wednesday, February 02, 2022

vscode-powershell

Just including several PSES fixes, namely around the F5 and F8 bugs.

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.1.1-preview

Monday, January 24, 2022

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2022.1.0-preview

Monday, January 10, 2022

vscode-powershell

Happy New Year! Please enjoy a new preview release! We have re-enabled nearly all of the tests in PowerShell Editor Services, and are becoming more confident in our ability to fix your reported issues without introducing regressions. Thanks so much for continuing to use and help improve the extension.

PowerShellEditorServices

v2021.12.0

Wednesday, December 22, 2021

vscode-powershell

This release does not include the latest major update of PowerShell Editor Services. We are updating the stable extension to bring some bug fixes forward. Please try out the PowerShell Preview extension for the latest and hopefully greatest experience, and help us squash those bugs!

PowerShellEditorServices

This extension update includes PowerShell Editor Services v2.5.3, a re-release of v2.5.2 which was the last version before the major pipeline and threading overhaul was merged in v3.0.0. By re-releasing we are able to update the module's signature with a renewed certificate.

v2021.12.0-preview

Monday, December 20, 2021

vscode-powershell

We're hard at work continuing to improvo the stability and coverage of the PowerShell Preview so we can bring the updates to the regular extension. Most recently we got the unit tests covering the debugger back online, which revealed a bug in the ability to set variables through the debugger. We're continuing to work to resolve this and re-enable the rest of our tests. Please keep using the Preview if you're able and filing bug reports, we appreciate it!

PowerShellEditorServices

v2021.11.1-preview

Monday, November 22, 2021

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2021.11.0-preview

Wednesday, November 03, 2021

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2021.10.3-preview

Thursday, October 28, 2021

vscode-powershell

No changes! New preview for PowerShell Editor Services v3.0.0!

PowerShellEditorServices

This preview release includes a complete overhaul of the core PowerShell engine of PowerShell Editor Services. This represents over a year's work, tracked in PSES #1295 and implemented in PSES #1459, and is our answer to many, many issues opened by users over the last few years. We're hoping you'll see a marked improvement in the reliability, performance and footprint of the extension as a result.

Previously the Integrated Console was run by setting threadpool tasks on a shared main runspace, and where LSP servicing was done with PowerShell idle events. This lead to overhead, threading issues and a complex implementation intended to work around the asymmetry between PowerShell as a synchronous, single-threaded runtime and a language server as an asynchronous, multi-threaded service.

Now, PowerShell Editor Services maintains its own dedicated pipeline thread, which is able to service requests similar to JavaScript's event loop, meaning we can run everything synchronously on the correct thread. We also get more efficiency because we can directly call PowerShell APIs and code written in C# from this thread, without the overhead of a PowerShell pipeline.

This change has overhauled how we service LSP requests, how the Integrated Console works, how PSReadLine is integrated, how debugging is implemented, how remoting is handled, and a long tail of other features in PowerShell Editor Services.

Also, in making it, while 6,000 lines of code were added, we removed 12,000, for a more maintainable, more efficient and easier to understand extension backend.

While most of our testing has been re-enabled (and we're working on adding more), there are bound to be issues with this new implementation. Please give this a try and let us know if you run into anything.

We also want to thank @SeeminglyScience for his help and knowledge as we've made this migration.

Finally, a crude breakdown of the work from the commits:

  • An initial dedicated pipeline thread consumer implementation
  • Implement the console REPL
  • Implement PSRL idle handling
  • Implement completions
  • Move to invoking PSRL as a C# delegate
  • Implement cancellation and Ctrl+C
  • Make F8 work again
  • Ensure execution policy is set correctly
  • Implement $PROFILE support
  • Make nested prompts work
  • Implement REPL debugging
  • Implement remote debugging in the REPL
  • Hook up the debugging UI
  • Implement a new concurrent priority queue for PowerShell tasks
  • Reimplement the REPL synchronously rather than on its own thread
  • Really get debugging working...
  • Implement DSC breakpoint support
  • Reimplement legacy readline support
  • Ensure stdio is still supported as an LSP transport
  • Remove PowerShellContextService and other defunct code
  • Get integration tests working again (and improve diagnosis of PSES failures)
  • Get unit testing working again (except debug service tests)

v2021.10.2

Thursday, October 28, 2021

vscode-powershell

The PSScriptAnalyzer rule explanations now open the beautiful published documentation at docs.microsoft.com.

PowerShellEditorServices

No changes in this release, but the next preview will include PowerShell Editor Services v3.0.0, with the pipeline rewrite!

v2021.10.1

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

vscode-powershell

Check out the new Pester Tests adapter by Justin Grote and inspired by Tyler Leonhardt. While still under development, it provides integration with Visual Studio Code's new test explorer interface for Pester tests and is quite nice!

PowerShellEditorServices

v2021.10.0

Friday, October 08, 2021

This is a hot-fix release for an upstream change to the location of the PSScriptAnalyzer rules documentation.

vscode-powershell

  • 🐛 ‍🕵️ vscode-powershell #3608 - Fix base URI for PSScriptAnalyzer rule documentation. (Thanks @bgold09!)

PowerShellEditorServices

No changes, but stay tuned for major updates! The pipeline rewrite work is under review.

v2021.9.2

Thursday, September 30, 2021

This release includes changes from both the v2021.9.1-preview and v2021.9.2-preview. There were no changes made to PowerShell Editor Services, but several several bugfixes made to the extension, and most notably, the extension code is now properly minified and bundled. This should result in a faster and more reliable extension.

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

No changes.

v2021.9.0

Thursday, September 09, 2021

This release includes changes from both v2021.8.3-preview and v2021.9.0-preview.

A new stopDebugger notification was added that allows PowerShell Editor Services, the LSP module, to stop an attached UI debugger (such as VS Code's) for debugger sessions started by executing code with a PSBreakpoint attached. This may not work in all cases but should improve usability.

The PowerShell status bar indicator no longer uses custom coloring but instead pulls from the user's theme. A formatting bug was fixed by community maintainer Patrick Meinecke. A regression in the debug launch configuration's script parameter was fixed and covered with a test. And finally, the bundled PSScriptAnalyzer was updated to v1.20.0.

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2021.8.2

Tuesday, August 24, 2021

This release also contains all changes listed in v2021.8.1-preview below. Notably it fixes several major issues when debugging scripts that were caused by threading deadlocks in both PowerShell Editor Services and its library, OmniSharp's C# Language Server Protocol that we resolved by setting the compiler to treat CA2007 as an error. This allowed us to programmatically fix every awaited task to use .ConfigureAwait(false) and so avoid deadlocks caused by the introduction of new synchronization contexts in user code (such as the use of System.Windows.Forms). By fixing this through a compiler rule, we effectively prevent the issue from recurring. Additionally, we not only added a full regression test for this scenario but also re-enabled all the prior DebugService unit tests in PowerShell Editor Services.

While there is still much work to do, we are making significant headway on improve the debugger's reliability, one of our current project focuses. See the Debugger Reliability Project for our progress.

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2021.8.1-preview

Thursday, August 19, 2021

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2021.8.0

Monday, August 09, 2021

The first stable release since v2021.6.2, this release includes all the changes from v2021.8.0-preview and v2021.7.0-preview (see below). While the highlights are listed here, please read our blog post for the full story!

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2021.8.0-preview

Tuesday, August 03, 2021

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2021.7.0-preview

Thursday, July 15, 2021

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2021.6.2

Thursday, June 24, 2021

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2021.6.1

Monday, June 21, 2021

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2021.5.1

Thursday, May 27, 2021

vscode-powershell

This stable release includes all the changes in the previews since v2021.2.2, plus the following:

Since we have disabled semantic highlighting by default now, if you wish to re-enable it, use:

"[powershell]": {
    "editor.semanticHighlighting.enabled": true
}

We now also remove - and $ from the word separators by default for PowerShell files. To add them back, use:

"[powershell]": {
    "editor.wordSeparators": "`~!@#$%^&*()-=+[{]}\\|;:'\",.<>/?"
}

PowerShellEditorServices

This stable release includes all the changes in the previews since v2.3.0, plus the following:

The most significant change is the update to OmniSharp v0.19.2, from the previous version v0.18.3, released in November 2020. OmniSharp is the underlying Language Server Protocol and Debug Adapter Protocol server library, and as such is our biggest dependency. This update brings us to the LSP 3.16 and DAP 1.48.x specifications, enabling us to start incorporating all the latest LSP changes, and it includes numerous bug fixes and enhancements resulting in a faster and more stable server and extension experience.

v2021.5.0-preview

Friday, May 21, 2021

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2021.4.2-preview

Monday, April 26, 2021

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2021.4.1-preview

Friday, April 02, 2021

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

Please note that these changes were intended to be included in this preview release; however, a silent pipeline failure led to the previous version of PowerShellEditorServices being included instead. These changes will be included in the next preview release. See: #3282

v2021.2.2

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

vscode-PowerShell

  • 📺 ✨ New semantic highlighting. (Thanks @justinytchen!)
  • 🐢 ✨ Added Pester v5 support to problem matcher. (Thanks @fflaten!)
  • ✨ 👮 Updated PSScriptAnalyzer to 1.19.1. Fixes formatting bugs! (Thanks @bergmeister!)
  • 🛫 🐛 vscode-powershell #3181 - Fix PowerShell MSIX (Store) detection.
  • 🐛 Many squashed bugs! (See previews below for details.)

PowerShellEditorServices

  • 👷 ✨ No changes, just releasing a stable version.

v2021.2.1-preview

Tuesday, February 23, 2021

vscode-PowerShell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2021.2.0-preview

Friday, February 19, 2021

vscode-PowerShell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2020.9.0-preview

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

vscode-PowerShell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2020.7.0-preview

Thursday, July 30, 2020

vscode-PowerShell

  • 📺✨ vscode-powershell #2834 - Enable LSP proposed features for Semantic Highlighting. Also allow the PowerShell ISE theme to use Semantic Highlighting.
  • 👮✨ vscode-powershell #2831 - Expose new formatter setting powershell.codeFormatting.useConstantStrings from PSScriptAnalyzer 1.19.1. (Thanks @bergmeister!)
  • 📺✨ vscode-powershell #2789 - Initial Notebook UI Mode in VS Code Insiders.
  • 🔧✨ vscode-powershell #2693 - Migrate setting value of powershell.codeFormatting.whitespaceAroundPipe to new setting powershell.codeFormatting.addWhitespaceAroundPipe automatically. (Thanks @bergmeister!)
  • 🧹✨ vscode-powershell #2685 - Refactor vscode-powershell IFeature classes to separate them into features that depend on the language server and features that don't. (Thanks @bergmeister!)
  • ✨ vscode-powershell #2799 - Initial VSCode-extension-facing PowerShell API: registering, unregistering, and getting PowerShell version details.
  • 🛫✨ vscode-powershell #2796 - Add setting to change the cwd of the Powershell Integrated Console. (Thanks @jwfx!)
  • 🛫🐛 vscode-powershell #2780 - Fix quoting of banner for global tool.
  • 🔍🐛 vscode-powershell #2765 - Emit 'terminated' event if PSES is restarted.

PowerShellEditorServices

v2020.6.0

Thursday, June 11, 2020

  • ⚡️🧠 Better performance of overall.
  • ✨🛫 Support for ConstrainedLanguage mode.
  • 🐛 Many squashed bugs
  • ✨👮 Updated PSScriptAnalyzer to 1.19.0. - More formatting settings! (Thanks @bergmeister!)
  • 📟 ✨ Updated PSReadLine to 2.0.2. (From now on, the stable extension will have the latest stable version of PSReadLine and the PowerShell Preview extension will have the latest preview of PSReadLine)

v2020.6.1-preview

Monday, June 08, 2020

vscode-PowerShell

PowerShellEditorServices

  • 🔗 🐛 PowerShellEditorServices #1304 - Use From instead of FromFileSystem fixing CodeLens references.
  • 📟 ✨ PowerShellEditorServices #1290 - Allow PSReadLine to work in ConstrainedLanguage mode.
  • 📟 ✨ The PowerShell Preview extension now uses v2.1.0-preview.2 of PSReadLine. If you want the predictions feature back, add the following to your $PROFILE:
Set-PSReadLineOption -PredictionSource History

v2020.6.0-preview

Monday, June 01, 2020

vscode-PowerShell

  • 🐢✨ vscode-powershell #2730 - Support adding an OutputFile and allow running Pester tests from the command pallet.
  • 🔗🐛 vscode-powershell #2705 - Tweak CodeLens logic now that we use Omnisharp's serializer.
  • 📺✨ vscode-powershell #2702 - Add coloring for $ and remove it from wordSepartors. (Thanks @MJECloud!)
  • 📺✨ vscode-powershell #2704 - Add buttons for moving the terminal pane around. (Thanks @MartinGC94!)
  • 👮‍🐛 vscode-powershell #2703 - Tweak whitespaceAroundPipe settings migration logic to do it only once. (Thanks @bergmeister!)
  • 👮‍🐛 vscode-powershell #2698 - Change default of powershell.codeFormatting.pipelineIndentationStyle from None back to NoIndentation due to PSScriptAnalyzer bug. (Thanks @bergmeister!)

PowerShellEditorServices

v2020.5.0-preview

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

vscode-PowerShell

  • ✨🐢 vscode-powershell #2670 - Add debug output setting for Pester. (Thanks @nohwnd!)
  • ✨🔧 vscode-powershell #2689 - Migrate setting value of powershell.codeFormatting.whitespaceAroundPipe to powershell.codeFormatting.addWhitespaceAroundPipe automatically. (Thanks @bergmeister!)
  • 🐛🔧 vscode-powershell #2688 - Respect user choice when dismissing the powerShellExePath dialog. (Thanks @bergmeister!)
  • ✨👷 vscode-powershell #2686 - Code clean up around some unused variables. (Thanks @bergmeister!)
  • 🐛🐢 vscode-powershell #2676 - Fix Pester invocation for 3x versions. (Thanks @nohwnd!)
  • ✨👮‍ vscode-powershell #2674 - Add additional settings for PSScriptAnalyzer 1.19. (Thanks @bergmeister!)
  • ⚡️🔍 vscode-powershell #2672 - Use in-memory debug adapter instead of spinning up new process.

PowerShellEditorServices

v2020.4.3-preview

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

vscode-PowerShell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2020.4.0

Thursday, April 15, 2020

  • ⚡️🧠 Better performance of overall but especially IntelliSense.
  • 🐛📟 Errors show up properly on screen in PowerShell Integrated Console.
  • ✨🐢 Run a single test in Pester v5 by setting "powershell.pester.useLegacyCodeLens": false.
  • 🐛🔧 Ignore files specified in files.exclude and search.exclude in reference/CodeLens search.

v2020.4.2-preview

Monday, April 13, 2020

PowerShellEditorServices

v2020.4.1-preview

Wednesday, April 09, 2020

PowerShellEditorServices

  • ✨📟 PowerShellEditorServices #1255 - Move PSReadLine invocation into cmdlets to get closer to supporting ConstrainedLanguage mode. Also removes hard coded PSReadLine assembly version.

v2020.4.0-preview

Wednesday, April 08, 2020

vscode-PowerShell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2020.3.2-preview

Tuesday, March 31, 2020

PowerShellEditorServices

v2020.3.1-preview

Thursday, March 26, 2020

PowerShellEditorServices

v2020.3.0-preview

Thursday, March 12, 2020

vscode-PowerShell

  • 🐛👷‍♀️ vscode-powershell #2533 - Change source repository's recommended extension from ms-vscode.csharp to ms-dotnettools.csharp. (Thanks @devlead!)
  • ✨🐢 vscode-powershell #2441 - Run a single Pester test. (Thanks @nohwnd!)
  • 🐛🔧 vscode-powershell #2524 - Add files.exclude and search.exclude to configurations sent through to exclude them from PSES functionality

PowerShellEditorServices

v2020.3.0

Thursday, March 12, 2020

Release of preview work to stable branch

This release, coinciding with the GA release of PowerShell 7, brings a year of work on the PowerShell extension into the stable release. The timing of this release is deliberate, since some of the new features depend on additions and bugfixes in PowerShell 7, while others have a much better experience in PowerShell 7 thanks to many improvements shipping with it.

Some changes that come to the stable channel in this release include:

After this release, the stable/preview channels will now function as originally intended, where the preview channel will be the beta release for features to come out in the following stable release.

You may also notice that the history of the changelog has changed. For a full list of changes between this release and the previous stable release, see here. You can find the changelog from the old stable fork here.

vscode-PowerShell

  • ✨📺 vscode-PowerShell #2503 - Pick up the PowerShell dotnet global tool as a PowerShell runtime.
  • 🐛🛫 vscode-PowerShell #2491 - Fix a startup issue where console becomes unresponsive due to the client waiting for the terminal PID from VSCode.
  • 🐛👮 vscode-PowerShell #2190 - Look for PSScriptAnalyzerSettings.psd1 in the workspace root by default for script analysis, defaulting back to the default rules when not found.
  • 🧰 vscode-PowerShell #2477 - Stop using the caption field on powerShell/showChoicePrompt messages, and instead display only the message field.

PowerShellEditorServices

v2020.2.0

Thursday, February 20, 2020

vscode-PowerShell

  • 🐛📖 vscode-PowerShell #2470 - Fix incorrect reference to New-ManifestModule in documentation. (Thanks @rbleattler!)
  • 🐛📺 vscode-PowerShell #2469 - Close other open pwsh instances when updating PowerShell.
  • 🐛📟 vscode-PowerShell #2434 - Use a new VSCode API to hide the integrated terminal from the shell list until debugging when showOnStartup is disabled.
  • ✨🐢 vscode-PowerShell #2445 - Add Run/Debug Pester tests context menu options in the VSCode explorer for Pester test files. (Thanks @bergmeister!)
  • 🐛🐢 vscode-PowerShell #2438 - Fixes test failures in Pester contexts not showing up in the Problems pane. (Thanks @tillig!)
  • 🐛🔍 vscode-PowerShell #2548 - Show error message instead of not responding when temp debugging is used with an untitled file.
  • 👷 vscode-PowerShell #2465 - Move macOS CI images to 10.14 (Thanks @bergmeister!)

PowerShellEditorServices

  • 🐛📁 vscode-PowerShell #2421 - Fix WorkspacePath so that references work with non-ASCII characters.
  • 🐛📟 vscode-PowerShell #2372 - Fix prompt behavior when debugging.
  • 🐛🛫 PowerShellEditorServices #1171 - Fix race condition where running multiple profiles caused errors.
  • 🐛📟 vscode-PowerShell #2420 - Fix an issue where pasting to a Get-Credential prompt in some Windows versions caused a crash.
  • 🐛📟 vscode-PowerShell #1790 - Fix an inconsistency where Read-Host -Prompt 'prompt' would return $null rather than empty string when given no input.
  • 🐛🔗 PowerShellEditorServices #1177 - Fix an issue where untitled files did not work with CodeLens.
  • ⚡️⏱️ PowerShellEditorServices #1172 - Improve async/await and Task usage to reduce concurrency overhead and improve performance.
  • 🐛📟 PowerShellEditorServices #1178 - Improve PSReadLine experience where no new line is rendered in the console.
  • ✨🔍 PowerShellEditorServices #1119 - Enable new debugging APIs added in PowerShell 7, improving performance and fixing issues where the debugger would stop responding or be unable to update breakpoints while scripts were running.
  • 👷📟 PowerShellEditorServices #1187 - Upgrade built-in PSReadLine to 2.0.0 GA.
  • 🐛👮 PowerShellEditorServices #1179 - Improve integration with PSScriptAnalyzer, improving performance, fixing an error when PSScriptAnalyzer is not available, fix CodeActions not appearing on Windows, fix an issue where the PSModulePath is reset by PSScriptAnalyzer opening new runspaces.
  • 🚂 PowerShellEditorServices #1183 - Close over public APIs not intended for external use and replace with new, async-friendly APIs.

v2020.1.0

Monday, January 13, 2020

vscode-PowerShell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2019.12.0

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

vscode-PowerShell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2019.11.0

Friday, November 1, 2019

Special Note

In this release of the preview extension, we've merged significant architectural work into PowerShell Editor Services. After several months of work, PSES now uses the Omnisharp LSP library to handle Language Server Protocol interaction instead of rolling its own, allowing PSES to concentrate on being a good PowerShell backend. We hope you'll see increased performance and stability in this release. As always, please let us know if you find any issues.

vscode-PowerShell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2019.9.0

Monday, September 23, 2019

vscode-PowerShell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2019.5.0

Wednesday, May 22, 2019

vscode-PowerShell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2.0.0-preview.3

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

vscode-powershell

  • vscode-PowerShell #1865 - Change casing of powershell.codeformatting settings for consistency:
    • powershell.codeformatting.WhitespaceInsideBrace is now powershell.codeformatting.whitespaceInsideBrace
    • powershell.codeformatting.WhitespaceAroundPipe is now powershell.codeformatting.whitespaceAroundPipe
  • vscode-PowerShell #1852 - Turn powershell.codeformatting.useCorrectCasing setting off by default until PSSA issues are fixed (Thanks @bergmeister!)
  • vscode-PowerShell #1838 - Set PSReadLine featureFlag default to null so that it can be resolved by settings
  • vscode-PowerShell #1837 - Do not use -EncodedCommand on Windows
  • vscode-PowerShell #1825 - Switch to current lowercase names for powershell and mdlint recommended extensions (Thanks @rkeithhill!)
  • vscode-PowerShell #1823 - Update to official TSLint ext in extensions.json, old version deprecated (Thanks @rkeithhill!)

PowerShellEditorServices

v2.0.0-preview.2

Friday, March 29, 2019

Highlights

  • Write-Progress work in the integrated console ⏰
  • Support for PSScriptAnalyzer 1.18 📝
  • The ability to debug any runspace in any process 🔎
  • PSReadLine enabled by default on Windows 🎨
  • (Bug fix!) You can open untitled workspaces/folders again! 🐛☠️

There are a lot more goodies in this version. Checkout the changelog below!

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v2.0.0-preview.1

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Preview builds of the PowerShell extension are now available in VSCode

We are excited to announce the PowerShell Preview extension in the VSCode marketplace! The PowerShell Preview extension allows users on Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell Core 6 to get and test the latest updates to the PowerShell extension and comes with some exciting features.

The PowerShell Preview extension is a substitute for the PowerShell extension so both the PowerShell extension and the PowerShell Preview extension should not be enabled at the same time.

By having a preview channel, in addition to our existing stable channel, we can get new features out faster and get feedback faster from you, the users.

How to Get/Use the PowerShell Preview extension

If you dont already have VSCode, start here.

Once you have VSCode open, click Clt+Shift+X to open the extensions marketplace. Next, type PowerShell Preview in the search bar. Click Install on the PowerShell Preview page. Finally, click Reload in order to refresh VSCode.

If you already have the PowerShell extension, please disable it to use the Powershell Preview extension. To disable the PowerShell extension, find it in the Extensions sidebar view, specifically under the list of Enabled extensions, Right-click on the PowerShell extension and select Disable. Please note that it is important to only have either the PowerShell extension or the PowerShell Preview extension enabled at one time. How to Disable

What the first preview contains

The v2.0.0-preview.1 version of the extension is built on .NET Standard (enabling support for both Windows PowerShell and PowerShell Core from one assembly)

It also contains PSReadLine support in the integrated console for Windows behind a feature flag. PSReadLine provides a consistent and rich interactive experience, including syntax coloring and multi-line editing and history, in the PowerShell console, in Cloud Shell, and now in VSCode terminal. For more information on the benefits of PSReadLine, check out their documentation.

To enable PSReadLine support in the Preview version on Windows, please add the following to your user settings:

"powershell.developer.featureFlags": [ "PSReadLine" ]

HUGE thanks to @SeeminglyScience for all his amazing work getting PSReadLine working in PowerShell Editor Services!

Breaking Changes

As stated above, this version of the PowerShell extension only works with Windows PowerShell versions 5.1 and PowerShell Core 6.

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v1.10.2

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

vscode-PowerShell

PowerShellEditorServices

v1.10.1

Friday, December 7, 2018

PowerShellEditorServices

v1.10.0

Monday, December 3, 2018

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v1.9.0

Thursday, September 27, 2018

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v1.8.4

Friday, August 31, 2018

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v1.8.3

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v1.8.2

Thursday, July 26, 2018

vscode-powershell

PowerShellEditorServices

v1.8.1

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

v1.8.0

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

1.7.0

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

1.6.0

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Fixes and Improvements

1.5.1

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

  • PowerShell/vscode-powershell #1100 - Fixed CodeLens on Pester test invocation fails with "Error: command 'vscode.startDebug' not found".

  • PowerShell/vscode-powershell #1091 - Fixed crash when editing remote file using psedit.

  • PowerShell/vscode-powershell #1084 - Fixed authenticode signature 'HashMismatch' on Start-EditorServices.ps1.

  • PowerShell/vscode-powershell #1078 - Fixed debug adapter process terminating when setting breakpoint in an Untitled file or in a Git diff window.

  • Update download.sh to remove macOS OpenSSL check since PowerShell Core Beta and higher no longer depend on OpenSSL. Thanks to elovelan!

  • Get-Help -ShowWindow will no longer error in the PowerShell Integrated Console. The help window will appear but at the moment, it will appear behind VSCode.

  • Fix language server crash when processing a deep directory structure that exceeds max path.

1.5.0

Friday, October 27, 2017

Fixes and Improvements

1.4.3

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

  • #1016 - Fixed a conflict with the "Azure Resource Manager for Visual Studio Code" extension which prevented the PowerShell extension from loading successfully.

1.4.2

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

  • #993 - powershell.powerShellExePath using Sysnative path should be automatically corrected when using 64-bit Visual Studio Code
  • #1008 - Windows PowerShell versions (x64 and x86) are not enumerated correctly when using 64-bit Visual Studio Code
  • #1009 - PowerShell version indicator in status bar is missing tooltip
  • #1020 - "Show Session Menu", "Show Integrated Console", and "Restart Current Session" commands should cause PowerShell extension to be activated

1.4.1

Thursday, June 22, 2017

1.4.0

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

New HTML content view commands enabling custom UI tabs

You can now show editor tabs with custom HTML-based UI by using the new HTML content view commands! This is the first step toward UI extensions for VS Code written in PowerShell.

Here's an example:

$view = New-VSCodeHtmlContentView -Title "My Custom View" -ShowInColumn One
Set-VSCodeHtmlContentView -View $view -Content "<h1>Hello world!</h1>"
Write-VSCodeHtmlContentView $view -Content "<b>I'm adding new content!</b><br />"

And here's the result:

HTML view demo

Check out the cmdlet help for the following commands to learn more:

  • New-VSCodeHtmlContentView
  • Show-VSCodeHtmlContentView
  • Close-VSCodeHtmlContentView
  • Set-VSCodeHtmlContentView
  • Write-VSCodeHtmlContentView

Since this is a first release, we've restricted the use of JavaScript inside of the HTML. We will add this capability in a future release!

Code formatting setting presets for common styles

We've now added code formatting presets for the most common code style conventions used in the PowerShell community:

  • OTBS - Known as the "One True Brace Style". Causes else, catch, and other keywords to be "cuddled", keeping them on the same line as the previous closing brace:

    if ($var -eq $true) {
  # Do the thing
} else {
  # Do something else
}

  • Stroustrup - Causes beginning curly braces to be placed on the same line as the statement:

    if ($var -eq $true) {
  # Do the thing
}
else {
  # Do something else
}

  • Allman - All curly braces are preceded by a newline:

    if ($var -eq $true)
{
  # Do the thing
}
else
{
  # Do something else
}

  • Custom - Allows full customization of the code formatting settings.

In addition, code formatting now respects your editor.insertSpaces and editor.tabSize settings!

Debugging in a temporary PowerShell Integrated Console

We've added the ability to debug your PowerShell code in a temporary PowerShell Integrated Console so that you have a fresh runspace and PowerShell process each time you hit F5!

This setting is necessary if you are developing with PowerShell 5 classes or modules using .NET assemblies because .NET types cannot be reloaded inside of the same PowerShell process. This new setting saves you from reloading your PowerShell session each time you debug your code!

You can configure this behavior in two ways:

  • Use the launch.json configuration parameter createTemporaryIntegratedConsole:

    {
  "type": "PowerShell",
  "request": "launch",
  "name": "PowerShell Launch Current File in Temporary Console",
  "script": "${file}",
  "args": [],
  "cwd": "${file}",
  "createTemporaryIntegratedConsole": true
},

  • Configure the setting powershell.debugging.createTemporaryIntegratedConsole:

    "powershell.debugging.createTemporaryIntegratedConsole": true,

The default value for these settings is false, meaning that the temporary console behavior is opt-in.

Configuring the user or workspace setting will cause all debugging sessions to be run in a temporary Integrated Console so it's useful if you would prefer this to be the default behavior. The launch.json setting overrides the user setting so you can always customize the behavior for a specific launch configuration.

NewFile() API and Out-CurrentFile command

You can now create a new untitled file from within the Integrated Console by using the $psEditor.Workspace.NewFile() command! Also, you can send the formatted output of any PowerShell command to the current file by using the Out-CurrentFile command:

Get-Process | Out-CurrentFile

Special thanks to Doug Finke for the contribution!

Other fixes and improvements

  • #881 - When you select a different PowerShell version in the session menu, your choice is persisted to the powershell.powerShellExePath setting.

  • #891 - Pester CodeLenses now run tests without string interpolation of test names

1.3.2

Monday, June 12, 2017

1.3.1

Friday, June 9, 2017

Fixes and improvements

  • #850 - Fixed an issue where lower-cased "describe" blocks were not identified by the CodeLens feature.

  • #851 - Fixed an issue where the language server would stop responding when typing out a describe block.

  • #852 - Fixed an issue where Pester test names would not be detected correctly when other arguments like -Tags were being used on a Describe block.

1.3.0

Friday, June 9, 2017

CodeLens for running and debugging Pester tests

We've added two new CodeLens actions that show up above Describe blocks in your Pester tests, "Run tests" and "Debug tests". By clicking one of these CodeLenses, your tests will be executed in the Integrated Console with the debugger attached. You can now set breakpoints and quickly debug a portion of your test script:

Pester CodeLens

CodeLens support for finding references of a function or cmdlet

We've also added CodeLenses for showing the number of references for a function or cmdlet that is defined in a script. If you click this CodeLens, the references pane will appear so that you can navigate through all of the references:

References CodeLens

We will add CodeLens support for PowerShell 5+ classes and class methods in a future update!

Document symbol support for Pester tests

We've also added document symbol support for Pester tests so that you can easily navigate among the Describe, Context, and It blocks in large Pester script files:

Pester symbols

New PowerShell ISE theme

We now include a new color theme that tries to provide a faithful interpretation of the PowerShell ISE's style, including a blue console background! To use this theme open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P), run the "Preferences: Color Theme" command, then select "PowerShell ISE".

ISE theme

This is a first attempt at making this happen so give us feedback if you think that the colors can be improved! Super huge thanks to Matt McNabb for putting this together!

New cmdlets inside the Integrated Console

Thanks to new PowerShell Editor Services co-maintainer Patrick Meinecke, we've gained a new set of useful commands for interacting with the $psEditor APIs within the Integrated Console:

This should also resolve the issues some people were seeing when we tried to load the unsigned temporary script containing Register-EditorCommand on machines with an AllSigned execution policy (#784).

Fixes and improvements

  • #827 - Fixed an issue where an Output panel will appear with an error when you close the PowerShell Integrated Terminal

1.2.1

Thursday, June 1, 2017

Fixes and improvements

  • PowerShell/PowerShellEditorServices#478 - Dynamic comment help snippets now generate parameter fields correctly when <# is typed above a param() block.

  • #808 - An extra PS> is no longer being written to the Integrated Console for some users who have custom prompt functions.

  • #813 - Finding references of symbols across the workspace now properly handles inaccessible folders and file paths

  • #810 - $psEditor.GetEditorContext() now doesn't throw exceptions when in an untitled file

  • #807 - The users's previously selected PowerShell session type is now retained when running the "PowerShell: Restart Current Session" command.

  • #821 - Note properties on PSObjects are now visible in the debugger's Variables view

1.2.0

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Dynamic comment-based help snippets now work inside functions (#763)

You asked for it, you got it! Dynamic comment-based help snippets now work inside function definitions, both above the param() block and at the end of the function body:

Comment help GIF

NOTE: There is an issue where parameter sections don't get generated inside of a function with a [CmdletBinding()] attribute. This is being tracked at PowerShell/PSScriptAnalyzer#768.

Session menu now contains entries for PowerShell Core installations on Windows (#794)

It's now much easier to switch between Windows PowerShell and PowerShell Core installs on Windows. When you run the "PowerShell: Show Session Menu" command or click the PowerShell version indication in the status bar you'll now see PowerShell Core entries in the menu:

Session menu

Improved PSScriptAnalyzer marker display and suppression snippets (#781) and (#783)

The green squiggle markers you receive from PSScriptAnalyzer now include the name of the corresponding rule in their description:

Rule name

This is really helpful with the new rule suppression snippets contributed by Jos Verlinde! You can access them by typing suppress- and selecting one of the suppression snippet options:

Suppress rule

New built-in Pester problem matcher (#798)

We now include a built-in problem matcher for Pester test output so that you don't need to define one in your tasks.json file any longer! You can reference the built-in problem matcher in your test tasks by using the name $pester:

    {
        "taskName": "Test",
        "suppressTaskName": true,
        "isTestCommand": true,
        "showOutput": "always",
        "args": [ "Invoke-Pester -PesterOption @{IncludeVSCodeMarker=$true}" ],
        "problemMatcher": "$pester"
    }

NOTE: There is an issue with problem matchers when using the new 2.0.0 version of VS Code's task runner. Pester errors may show up multiple times in the Problems panel. This issue is being tracked at #797.

Other fixes and improvements

  • #710 - Variable definitions can now be found across the workspace

  • #771 - Improved dynamic comment help snippet performance in scripts with many functions

  • #786 - Running the "Show Integrated Console" command will now start the extension if it isn't already started

  • #774 - Pressing Enter now causes custom prompt functions to be fully evaluated

  • #770 - Fixed issue where custom prompt function might be written twice when starting the integrated console

  • #767 - Fixed placeholder navigation for many built-in snippets

  • #782 - Fixed extension host crash when restarting the PowerShell session

  • #737 - Fixed hangs and high CPU when restarting or switching between PowerShell sessions

  • #777 - Changed "Starting PowerShell" message to clearly indicate that we're in the PowerShell Integrated Console

1.1.0

Thursday, May 18, 2017

New dynamic snippet for adding comment-based help (#748)

We've added a really cool new feature that enables you to create comment-based help blocks with ease! When you've defined a function in a PowerShell script file, you can now start typing a comment block above the function definition and it will be completed for you:

Help Comment GIF

This comment block works like a snippet, allowing you to tab through the fields to quickly add documentation for the parts you care about.

This is a first pass for this feature and we plan to do more with it in the future. Please feel free to file feature requests for anything else you'd like to see!

Breakpoints hit in the Integrated Console now activate the debugger UI (#619)

In previous releases it was necessary to start the "PowerShell Interactive Session" debugging configuration before you could run a command or script from the Integrated Console and hit breakpoints in the editor UI. We've just removed this limitation!

Now when you set a breakpoint using Set-PSBreakpoint and run a script or command in the Integrated Console, the debugger UI now gets activated:

Debugger Activate GIF

Note that breakpoints set in the Integrated Console still do not show up in the editor UI; this requires changes to VS Code that we'll be contributing for their next feature release.

Improved output when loading profile scripts (#663 and #689)

We now write the errors and Write-Output calls that occur while loading profile scripts so that it's easier to diagnose issues with your profile scripts. This fix will help us identify the things missing from the Integrated Console which cause your profile scripts to fail (like the current lack of a PrivateData object for setting console colors).

Please feel free to file issues for anything that causes your profile scripts to throw errors when they get loaded!

Other fixes and improvements

  • #751 - Removed keybinding for the "Find PowerShell Modules from the Gallery" command because it conflicts with VS Code's default "Format Selection" keybinding.

  • #739 - Fixed wording of PowerShell extension commands to have consistent capitalization. Thanks to @AndySchneiderDev for the contribution!

1.0.0

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

We are excited to announce that we've reached version 1.0! For more information, please see the official announcement on the PowerShell Team Blog.

New script argument UI when debugging (#705)

You can now set PowerShell debugger configurations to prompt for arguments to be passed to your script when it is executed. This is configured using the new ${command:SpecifyScriptArgs} configuration variable in launch.json:

        {
            "type": "PowerShell",
            "request": "launch",
            "name": "PowerShell Launch DebugTest.ps1 w/Args Prompt",
            "script": "${workspaceRoot}/DebugTest.ps1",
            "args": [ "${command:SpecifyScriptArgs}" ],
            "cwd": "${file}"
        }

When you launch this configuration you will see a UI popup asking for arguments:

image

You can type your arguments to the script as you would in PowerShell:

-Count 5

In future executions of this configuration, you will be presented with the arguments you typed the last time you ran it so that you can easily edit them and test variations!

New hash table alignment formatting rule (#672)

We've added a new code formatting rule that automatically aligns the equal sign in assignments of keys in hash tables or DSC configurations. It also works with nested hash tables! Here's a simple example:

Before
$formatTest = @{
    Apple = 4
    Tangerine = @{
        Orange = 2
        CornflowerBlue = 6
    }
    Banana = 3
}
After

$formatTest = @{
    Apple     = 4
    Tangerine = @{
        Orange         = 2
        CornflowerBlue = 6
    }
    Banana    = 3
}

This formatting rule is enabled by default but can be disabled with the following setting:

"powershell.codeFormatting.alignPropertyValuePairs": false

Added basic module-wide function references support

In the past, finding the references or definition of a function in FileA.ps1 only worked if FileA.ps1 had an explicit dot-source invocation of FileB.ps1. We have removed this limitation so that you can now find definitions and references of any function across all the script files in your project folder! This is especially useful if you write PowerShell modules where all of the source files are dot-sourced inside of the .psm1 file.

This new implementation is very basic and may give unexpected results, so please file an issue on GitHub if you get a result you did not expect!

Other integrated console and debugger improvements

  • Fixed #698 - When debugging scripts in the integrated console, the cursor position should now be stable after stepping through your code! Please let us know if you see any other cases where this issue appears.

  • Fixed #626 - Fixed an issue where debugging a script in one VS Code window would cause that script's output to be written to a different VS Code window in the same process.

  • Fixed #618 - Pressing enter on an empty command line in the Integrated Console no longer adds the empty line to the command history.

  • Fixed #617 - Stopping the debugger during a prompt for a mandatory script parameter no longer crashes the language server.

  • Fixed PowerShellEditorServices #428 - Debugger no longer hangs when you stop debugging while an input or choice prompt is active in the integrated console.

0.12.2

Friday, April 7, 2017

  • Fixed #662 - Changed usage of $env:PSMODULEPATH to $env:PSModulePath to conform to a recent change in PowerShell 6 (PowerShell/PowerShell#3255) which makes the casing of PSModulePath consistent between Windows and the *NIX platforms.

    NOTE: This is a breaking change for PowerShell extension users on Linux and macOS

    If you are using PowerShell 6.0.0-alpha.17 or lower you will need to upgrade to 6.0.0-alpha.18.

  • Fixed #645 - "Go to Definition" or "Find References" now work in untitled scripts without crashing the session

  • Fixed #632 - Debugger no longer hangs when launched while PowerShell session is still initializing

  • Fixed #655 - Fixed an issue with current working directory being set incorrectly when debugging untitled script files

  • Fixed PowerShellEditorServices #430 - Resolved occasional IntelliSense slowness by preventing the implicit loading of the PowerShellGet and PackageManagement modules. This change will be reverted once a bug in PackageManagement is fixed.

  • Fixed PowerShellEditorServices #427 - Fixed an occasional crash when requesting editor IntelliSense while running a script in the debugger

  • Fixed PowerShellEditorServices #416 - Cleaned up errors that would appear in the $Errors variable from the use of Get-Command and Get-Help in IntelliSense results

0.12.1

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

  • Fixed #648 - Resolved an error when launching an untitled script file in a workspace with no launch.json or in a window without a workspace path

0.12.0

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Debugging untitled files (#555)

You can now debug untitled files that are set to the PowerShell language mode. When you create a new untitled file, use the "Change Language Mode" command (Ctrl+K M) and choose "PowerShell" from the menu that appears. You can now press F5 to start debugging the script file without saving it.

In the upcoming 1.11.0 release of Visual Studio Code (or in the current VS Code Insiders release), you can configure the new files.defaultLanguage setting to powershell in either your User or Workspace settings to cause all untitled files to be created with the PowerShell mode by default. This will allow you to create new PowerShell scripts and debug them immediately without saving first!

New right-click context menu for Run Selection (#581)

By user request, we've also added a new "Run Selection" item in the right-click context menu for PowerShell script files:

image

Debugging improvements

  • Fixed #620 - PowerShell session now does not crash when a breakpoint is hit outside of debug mode

  • Fixed #614 - Auto variables are now populating correctly in the debugger. NOTE: There is a known issue where all of a script's variables begin to show up in the Auto list after running a script for the first time. This is caused by a change in 0.11.0 where we now dot-source all debugged scripts. We will provide an option for this behavior in the future.

  • Fixed #641 - PowerShell script files with capitalized extensions (.PS1, .PSM1) can now be launched in the debugger

  • Fixed #616 - Debugger now shows column position indicators when debugging pipelines or nested expressions:

    image

Integrated console improvements

  • Fixed PowerShell/PowerShellEditorServices#411 - Commands run outside of the integrated console prompt now interrupt the prompt correctly. This resolves a class of issues that appear when running commands in the extension like "New Project from Plaster Template" or any $psEditor commands added with the "Register-EditorCommand" function. Running any of these commands will now cause the current input prompt to be cancelled so that the command's output will be written correctly.

Code formatting improvements

  • Fixed #595 - High CPU usage when using formatOnType has now been resolve

  • Fixed #559 - The newLineAfterCloseBrace behavior has been improved to respect common syntax usages

  • FixedPowerShell/PowerShellEditorServices#380 - The whitespaceBeforeOpenBrace behavior now leaves "magic" functions with the correct formatting. For example: (0 .. 10).foreach{$_} now does not have a whitespace inserted before the {.

New Project with Plaster improvements

  • Fixed #643 - Running Plaster using the New Project command now interrupts the command prompt correctly

  • Fixed #504 - Confirming default values in Plaster input prompts by pressing Enter now works correctly

Other fixes and improvements

  • Added #639 and #640 - Our configuration setting descriptions have been edited for superior clarity thanks to June Blender!

  • Fixed #611 - Example-* snippets are now displaying correctly in IntelliSense results

  • Added #624 - When you update the PowerShell extension after this release, you will now see version update indicators which offer to display the changelog in a preview tab

0.11.0

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Remotely edited files can now be saved

  • Added #583 - When you open files in a remote PowerShell session with the psedit command, their updated contents are now saved back to the remote machine when you save them in the editor.

Integrated console improvements

  • Fixed #533 - The backspace key now works in the integrated console on Linux and macOS. This fix also resolves a few usability problems with the integrated console on all supported OSes.

  • Fixed 542 - Get-Credential now hides keystrokes correctly on Linux and macOS.

We also added some new settings (#580, #588) to allow fine-tuning of the integrated console experience:

  • powershell.startAutomatically (default: true) - If true, causes PowerShell extension features to start automatically when a PowerShell file is opened. If false, the user must initiate startup using the 'PowerShell: Restart Current Session' command. IntelliSense, code navigation, integrated console, code formatting, and other features will not be enabled until the extension has been started. Most users will want to leave this setting to true, though it was added to save CPU cycles if you often use new VS Code instances to quickly view PowerShell files.

  • powershell.integratedConsole.showOnStartup (default: true) - If true, causes the integrated console to be shown automatically when the PowerShell extension is initialized.

  • powershell.integratedConsole.focusConsoleOnExecute (default: true) - If true, causes the integrated console to be focused when a script selection is run or a script file is debugged.

Interactive debugging improvements

  • Added #540 - The scripts that you debug are now dot-sourced into the integrated console's session, allowing you to experiment with the results of your last execution.

  • Added #600 - Debugger commands like stepInto, continue, and quit are now available in the integrated console while debugging a script.

  • Fixed #596 - VS Code's Debug Console now warns the user when it is used while debugging a script. All command evaluation now happens through the integrated console so this message should help alleviate confusion.

Other fixes and improvements

  • Fixed #579 - Sorting of IntelliSense results is now consistent with the PowerShell ISE
  • Fixed #591 - "Editor commands" registered with the Register-EditorCommand function are now sorted alphabetically by their Name field, causing commands to be grouped based on their source module.
  • Fixed #575 - The interactive console no longer starts up with errors in the $Error variable.
  • Fixed #599 - The SSASCMDLETS module from SQL Server Analytics Service should now load correctly in the integrated console.

0.10.1

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Fixes and improvements

  • Fixed #566 - Enable editor IntelliSense while stopped at a breakpoint
  • Fixed #556 - Running and debugging scripts in the integrated console should not steal focus from the editor
  • Fixed #543 - Keyboard input using AltGr Ctrl+Alt modifiers does not work
  • Fixed #421 - Session startup should give a helpful error message if ConstrainedLanguage mode is turned on
  • Fixed #401 - Session startup should indicate if current PowerShell version is unsupported (PSv1 and v2)
  • Fixed #454 - ExecutionPolicy set via group policy or registry key should not cause language server to crash
  • Fixed #532 - DEVPATH environment variable not being set for interactive console session
  • Fixed PowerShellEditorServices #387 - Write-(Warning, Verbose, Debug) are missing message prefixes and foreground colors
  • Fixed PowerShellEditorServices #382 - PSHostUserInterface implementation should set SupportsVirtualTerminal to true

0.10.0

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

New interactive console experience

We are excited to provide you with the first release of our new interactive console experience! When you open up a PowerShell script file, you will be greeted with a new VS Code integrated terminal window called "PowerShell Integrated Console"

integrated console screenshot

In this console you will have an experience that falls somewhere between the PowerShell ISE and the PowerShell console host:

  • Tab completion of commands and their parameters
  • Basic command history, accessed using the up/down arrow keys
  • The psedit command opens existing files in an editor pane
  • Pressing F8 in an editor pane runs the current line or selection in the console
  • Native applications like git are fully supported
  • Script debugging shares the same console session with the editor for a true ISE-like debugging experience

It even works with your fancy prompt function if configured in your VS Code profile ($HOME\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.VSCode_profile.ps1):

custom prompt screenshot

The integrated console is supported on PowerShell v3 through v6 and works on Linux and macOS with PowerShell Core. By default you don't have to configure which PowerShell to run, we will pick an appropriate default based on your platform. If you'd like to choose a different install of PowerShell you can always change the powershell.developer.powerShellExePath setting.

Keep in mind that this is the first release for this feature and there are bound to be issues and missing functionality. Please feel free to file GitHub issues for any bugs or feature requests!

Known Issues and Limitations
  • #535 PSReadline is currently not supported in the integrated console. We will enable this in a future release.
  • #534 Integrated console prompt is not restarted when you stop the debugging of a local runspace in another process. This will be addressed soon in a patch update.
  • #533 Backspace key does not work in the integrated console on Linux and macOS. The workaround for now is to use Ctrl+H instead of the Backspace key. This will be addressed soon in a patch update.
  • #536 Integrated console sometimes does not have a scrollbar at startup. The workaround is to resize the width of the VS Code window slightly and the scrollbar will appear. This will be addressed soon in a patch update.

Get-Credential and PSCredential support

Now that we have the integrated console, we have added support for the Get-Credential cmdlet, Read-Host -AsSecureString, and any input prompt of type SecureString or PSCredential. When you run any of these cmdlets you will be prompted inside the integrated console:

credential screenshot

Code formatting improvements

We now support VS Code's editor.formatOnType setting so that your code gets formatted as you type! Formatting will be triggered when you press Enter or the closing curly brace character }.

Based on your feedback, we've also added new code formatting options, all of which are turned on by default:

  • powershell.codeFormatting.newLineAfterCloseBrace - Causes a newline to be inserted after a closing brace in multi-line expressions like if/else
  • powershell.codeFormatting.whitespaceBeforeOpenBrace - Causes whitespace to be inserted before an open brace like Foreach-Object {
  • powershell.codeFormatting.whitespaceBeforeOpenParen - Causes whitespace to be inserted before an open parentheses like if (
  • powershell.codeFormatting.whitespaceAroundOperator - Causes whitespace to be inserted around operators like = or +
  • powershell.codeFormatting.whitespaceAfterSeparator - Causes whitespace to be inserted around separator characters like ; and ,
  • powershell.codeFormatting.ignoreOneLineBlock - Single-line expressions, like small if/else statements, will not be expanded to multiple lines.

We've also made many improvements to the performance and stability of the formatter.

Debugging improvements

We've added a new configuration for debugging your Pester tests. By default it merely runs Invoke-Pester at the workspace path, but you can also edit the configuation to add additional arguments to be passed through.

We've also added support for column breakpoints. Now you can set a breakpoint directly within a pipeline by placing your cursor at any column on a line and running the Debug: Column Breakpoint command:

column breakpoint screenshot

For the latest PowerShell Core release (6.0.0-alpha.17), we have also added the ability to step into ScriptBlocks that are executed on another machine using Invoke-Command -Computer.

Set a breakpoint on an Invoke-Command line and then once it's hit:

Invoke-Command screenshot

Press F11 and you will step into the ScriptBlock. You can now continue to use "step in" and trace the ScriptBlock's execution on the remote machine:

remote script listing screenshot

Note that you cannot currently set breakpoints in the script listing file as this code is being executed without an actual script file on the remote machine.

Other fixes and improvements

  • Fixed #427 - The keybinding for "Expand Alias" command has been changed to Shift+Alt+E
  • Fixed #519 - Debugger hangs after continuing when watch expressions are set
  • Fixed #448 - Code formatter should keep indentation for multi-line pipelines
  • Fixed #518 - Code formatter fails when dollar-paren $() expressions are used
  • Fixed #447 - Code formatter crashes when run on untitled documents

0.9.0

Thursday, January 19, 2017

New PowerShell code formatter

We've added a formatter for PowerShell code which allows you to format an entire file or a selection within a file. You can access this formatter by running VS Code's Format Document and Format Selection commands inside of a PowerShell file.

You can configure code formatting with the following settings:

  • powershell.codeFormatting.openBraceOnSameLine - Places open brace on the same line as its associated statement. Default is true.
  • powershell.codeFormatting.newLineAfterOpenBrace - Ensures that a new line occurs after an open brace (unless in a pipeline statement on the same line). Default is true
  • editor.tabSize - Specifies the indentation width for code blocks. This is a VS Code setting but it is respected by the code formatter.
  • editor.formatOnSave - If true, automatically formats when they are saved. This is a VS Code setting and may also affect non-PowerShell files.

Please note that this is only a first pass at PowerShell code formatting, it may not format your code perfectly in all cases. If you run into any issues, please file an issue and give us your feedback!

Streamlined debugging experience - launch.json is now optional

NOTE: This improvement depends on VS Code 1.9.0 which is due for release early February! However, you can try it out right now with the VS Code Insiders release.

Thanks to a new improvement in VS Code's debugging APIs, we are now able to launch the PowerShell debugger on a script file without the need for a launch.json file. You can even debug individual PowerShell scripts without opening a workspace folder! Don't worry, you can still use a launch.json file to configure specific debugging scenarios.

We've also made debugger startup much more reliable. You will no longer see the dreaded "Debug adapter terminated unexpectedly" message when you try to launch the debugger while the language server is still starting up.

Support for debugging remote and attached runspaces

We now support remote PowerShell sessions via the Enter-PSSession cmdlet. This cmdlet allows you to create a PowerShell session on another machine so that you can run commands or debug scripts there. The full debugging experience works with these remote sessions on PowerShell 4 and above, allowing you to set breakpoints and see remote files be opened locally when those breakpoints are hit.

For PowerShell 5 and above, we also support attaching to local and remote PowerShell host processes using the Enter-PSHostProcess and Debug-Runspace cmdlets. This allows you to jump into another process and then debug a script that is already running in one of the runspaces in that process. The debugger will break execution of the running script and then the associated script file will be opened in the editor so that you can set breakpoints and step through its execution.

We've also added a new launch.json configuration for debugging PowerShell host processes:

Process launch configuration screenshot

When launched, the default "attach" configuration will prompt you with a list of PowerShell host processes on the local machine so that you can easily select one to be debugged:

Process selection UI screenshot

You can also edit the launch configuration to hardcode the launch parameters, even setting a remote machine to connect to before attaching to the remote process:

        {
            "type": "PowerShell",
            "request": "attach",
            "name": "PowerShell Attach to Host Process",
            "computerName": "my-remote-machine",
            "processId": "12345",
            "runspaceId": 1
        }

Please note that we currently do not yet support initiating remote sessions from Linux or macOS. This will be supported in an upcoming release.

Initial support for remote file opening using psedit

Another nice improvement is that we now support the psedit command in remote and attached sessions. This command allows you to open a file in a local or remote session so that you can set breakpoints in it using the UI before launching it. For now these remotely-opened files will not be saved back to the remote session when you edit and save them. We plan to add this capability in the next feature update.

New "interactive session" debugging mode

You can now create a new launch configuration which drops you directly into the debug console so that you can debug your scripts and modules however you wish. You can call Set-PSBreakpoint to set any type of breakpoint and then invoke your code through the console to see those breakpoints get hit. This mode can also be useful for debugging remote sessions.

Interactive session config screenshot

Please note that this is NOT a replacement for a true interactive console experience. We've added this debugging configuration to enable a few other debugging scenarios, like debugging PowerShell modules, while we work on a true interactive console experience using VS Code's Terminal interface.

New document symbol support for PSD1 files

We've extended our document symbol support to .psd1 files to make it really easy to navigate through them. When you have a .psd1 file open, run the Go to Symbol in File... command (Ctrl + Shift + O) and you'll see this popup:

psd1 symbol screenshot

You can type a symbol name or navigate using your arrow keys. Once you select one of the symbol names, the editor pane will jump directly to that line.

Other fixes and improvements

  • Added a new Open Examples Folder command to easily open the extension's example script folder.
  • Added a new setting powershell.developer.powerShellExeIsWindowsDevBuild which, when true, indicates that the powerShellExePath points to a Windows PowerShell development build.
  • Fixed #395: Quick Fix for PSAvoidUsingAliases rule replaces the entire command
  • Fixed #396: Extension commands loaded in PowerShell profile are not being registered
  • Fixed #391: DSC IntelliSense can cause the language server to crash
  • Fixed #400: Language server can crash when selecting PSScriptAnalyzer rules
  • Fixed #408: Quick fix requests meant for other extensions crash the language server
  • Fixed #401: Extension startup should indicate if the current PowerShell version is unsupported
  • Fixed #314: Errors/Warnings still show up in Problems window when file is closed
  • Fixed #388: Syntax errors are not reported when powershell.scriptAnalysis.enable is set to false

0.8.0

Friday, December 16, 2016

Improved PowerShell session management

It's now much easier to manage the active PowerShell session. We've added a new item to the status bar to indicate the state of the session and the version of PowerShell you're using:

Screenshot of status indicator

When this status item is clicked, a new menu appears to give you some session management options:

Screenshot of session menu

You can restart the active session, switch between 32-bit and 64-bit PowerShell on Windows or switch to another PowerShell process (like a 6.0 alpha build) that you've configured with the powershell.developer.powerShellExePath.

We've also improved the overall experience of loading and using the extension:

  • It will prompt to restart the PowerShell session if it crashes for any reason
  • It will also prompt to restart the session if you change any relevant PowerShell configuration setting like the aforementioned powershell.developer.powerShellExePath.
  • You can easily access the logs of the current session by running the command Open PowerShell Extension Logs Folder.

Create new modules with Plaster

In this release we've added integration with the Plaster module to provide a Create New Project from Plaster Template command. This command will walk you through the experience of selecting a template and filling in all of the project details:

Screenshot of Plaster template selection

Screenshot of Plaster input

We include one basic project template by default and will add more in the very near future. However, you won't need to update the PowerShell extension to get these new templates, they will appear when you install an update to the Plaster module from the PowerShell Gallery.

Check out Plaster's documentation for more details on how it can be used and how you can create your own templates.

New "quick fix" actions for PSScriptAnalyzer rules

The PowerShell extension now uses any "suggested corrections" which are returned with a rule violation in your script file to provide a "quick fix" option for the affected section of code. For example, when the PSAvoidUsingCmdletAliases rule finds the use of a non-allowlisted alias, you will see a light bulb icon that gives the option to change to the full name (right click or Ctrl+. on the marker):

Screenshot of PSScriptAnalyzer quick fix

If you'd like to see more quick fixes for PowerShell code, head over to the PSScriptAnalyzer GitHub page and get involved!

Easily enable and disable PSScriptAnalyzer rules

Another improvement related to PSScriptAnalyzer is the ability to change the active PSScriptAnalyzer rules in the current editing session using a helpful selection menu:

Screenshot of PSScriptAnalyzer rule selection

You can enable and disable active rules by running the Select PSScriptAnalyzer Rules command. For now this only changes the active session but in a future release we will modify your PSScriptAnalyzer settings file so that the changes are persisted to future editing sessions.

New "hit count" breakpoints in the debugger

When debugging PowerShell scripts you can now set "hit count" breakpoints which cause the debugger to stop only after the breakpoint has been encountered a specified number of times.

Screenshot of a hit count breakpoint

Other fixes and improvements

  • We now provide snippets for the launch.json configuration file which make it easier to add new PowerShell debugging configurations for your project.
  • In PowerShell launch.json configurations, the program parameter has now been renamed to script. Configurations still using program will continue to work.
  • Fixed #353: Cannot start PowerShell debugger on Windows when offline
  • Fixed #217: PowerShell output window should be shown when F8 is pressed
  • Fixed #292: Check for Homebrew's OpenSSL libraries correctly on macOS
  • Fixed #384: PowerShell snippets broken in VS Code 1.8.0

0.7.2

Friday, September 2, 2016

  • Fixed #243: Debug adapter process has terminated unexpectedly
  • Fixed #264: Add check for OpenSSL on OS X before starting the language service
  • Fixed #271: PSScriptAnalyzer settings path isn't being passed along
  • Fixed #273: Debugger crashes after multiple runs
  • Fixed #274: Extension crashes on Ctrl+Hover

0.7.1

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

  • "Auto" variable scope in debugger UI now expands by default
  • Fixed #244: Extension fails to load if username contains spaces
  • Fixed #246: Restore default PSScriptAnalyzer ruleset
  • Fixed #248: Extension fails to load on Windows 7 with PowerShell v3

0.7.0

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Introducing support for Linux and macOS

This release marks the beginning of our support for Linux and macOS via the new cross-platform release of PowerShell. You can find installation and usage instructions at the PowerShell GitHub repository.

0.6.2

Friday, August 12, 2016

  • Fixed #231: In VS Code 1.4.0, IntelliSense has stopped working
  • Fixed #193: Typing "n" breaks intellisense
  • Fixed #187: Language server sometimes crashes then $ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"

0.6.1

Monday, May 16, 2016

  • Fixed #180: Profile loading should be enabled by default
  • Fixed #183: Language server sometimes fails to initialize preventing IntelliSense, etc from working
  • Fixed #182: Using 'Run Selection' on a line without a selection only runs to the cursor position
  • Fixed #184: When running a script in the debugger, $host.Version reports wrong extension version

0.6.0

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Added a new cross-editor extensibility model

  • We've added a new extensibility model which allows you to write PowerShell code to add new functionality to Visual Studio Code and other editors with a single API. If you've used $psISE in the PowerShell ISE, you'll feel right at home with $psEditor. Check out the documentation for more details!

Support for user and system-wide profiles

  • We've now introduced the $profile variable which contains the expected properties that you normally see in powershell.exe and powershell_ise.exe:
    • AllUsersAllHosts
    • AllUsersCurrentHost
    • CurrentUserAllHosts
    • CurrentUserCurrentHost
  • In Visual Studio Code the profile name is Microsoft.VSCode_profile.ps1.
  • $host.Name now returns "Visual Studio Code Host" and $host.Version returns the version of the PowerShell extension that is being used.

Other improvements

  • IntelliSense for static methods and properties now works correctly. If you type :: after a type such as [System.Guid] you will now get the correct completion results. This also works if you press Ctrl+Space after the :: characters.
  • $env variables now have IntelliSense complete correctly.
  • Added support for new VSCode command Debug: Start Without Debugging. Shortcut for this command is Ctrl+F5.
  • Changed the keyboard shortcut for PowerShell: Expand Alias from Ctrl+F5 to Ctrl+Alt+e.
  • Added support for specifying a PSScriptAnalyzer settings file by providing a full path in your User Settings for the key powershell.scriptAnalysis.settingsPath. You can also configure the same setting in your project's .vscode\settings.json file to contain a workspace-relative path. If present, this workspace-level setting overrides the one in your User Settings file. See the extension's examples\.vscode\settings.json file for an example.
  • The debug adapter now does not crash when you attempt to add breakpoints for files that have been moved or don't exist.
  • Fixed an issue preventing output from being written in the debugger if you don't set a breakpoint before running a script.

New configuration settings

  • powershell.scriptAnalysis.settingsPath: Specifies the path to a PowerShell Script Analyzer settings file. Use either an absolute path (to override the default settings for all projects) or use a path relative to your workspace.

0.5.0

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Support for PowerShell v3 and v4

  • Support for PowerShell v3 and v4 is now complete! Note that for this release, Script Analyzer support has been disabled for PS v3 and v4 until we implement a better strategy for integrating it as a module dependency

Debugging improvements

  • Added support for command breakpoints.

    Hover over the Debug workspace's 'Breakpoints' list header and click the 'Add' button then type a command name (like Write-Output) in the new text box that appears in the list.

  • Added support for conditional breakpoints.

    Right click in the breakpoint margin to the left of the code editor and click 'Add conditional breakpoint' then enter a PowerShell expression in the text box that appears in the editor.

Other improvements

  • Added a preview of a possible project template for PowerShell Gallery modules in the examples folder. Includes a PSake build script with Pester test, clean, build, and publish tasks. See the examples\README.md file for instructions. Check it out and give your feedback on GitHub!
  • using 'module' now resolves relative paths correctly, removing a syntax error that previously appeared when relative paths were used
  • Calling Read-Host -AsSecureString or Get-Credential from the console now shows an appropriate "not supported" error message instead of crashing the language service. Support for these commands will be added in a later release.

New configuration settings

  • powershell.useX86Host: If true, causes the 32-bit language service to be used on 64-bit Windows. On 32-bit Windows this setting has no effect.

0.4.1

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

  • Updated PSScriptAnalyzer 1.4.0 for improved rule marker extents
  • Added example Pester task for running tests in the examples folder
  • Fixed #94: Scripts fail to launch in the debugger if the working directory path contains spaces

0.4.0

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Debugging improvements

@rkeithhill spent a lot of time polishing the script debugging experience for this release:

  • You can now pass arguments to scripts in the debugger with the args parameter in launch.json
  • You can also run your script with the 32-bit debugger by changing the type parameter in launch.json to "PowerShell x86" (also thanks to @adamdriscoll!)
  • The new default PowerShell debugger configuration now launches the active file in the editor
  • You can also set the working directory where the script is run by setting the cwd parameter in launch.json to an absolute path. If you need a workspace relative path, use ${workspaceRoot} to create an absolute path e.g. "${workspaceRoot}/modules/foo.psm1".

We recommend deleting any existing launch.json file you're using so that a new one will be generated with the new defaults.

Console improvements

  • Improved PowerShell console output formatting and performance

    • The console prompt is now displayed after a command is executed
    • Command execution errors are now displayed correctly in more cases
    • Console output now wraps at 120 characters instead of 80 characters

  • Added choice and input prompt support

    • When executing code using the 'Run Selection' command, choice and input prompts appear as VS Code UI popups
    • When executing code in the debugger, choice and input prompts appear in the Debug Console

New commands

  • "Find/Install PowerShell modules from the gallery" (Ctrl+K Ctrl+F): Enables you to find and install modules from the PowerShell Gallery (thanks @dfinke!)
  • "Open current file in PowerShell ISE" (Ctrl+Shift+i): Opens the current file in the PowerShell ISE (thanks @janegilring!)

Editor improvements

  • Path auto-completion lists show just the current directory's contents instead of the full path (which had resulted in clipped text)
  • Parameter auto-completion lists are now sorted in the same order as they are in PowerShell ISE where command-specific parameters preceed the common parameters
  • Parameter auto-completion lists show the parameter type
  • Command auto-completion lists show the resolved command for aliases and the path for executables
  • Many improvements to the PowerShell snippets, more clearly separating functional and example snippets (all of the latter are prefixed with ex-)
  • Added some additional example script files in the examples folder

New configuration settings

  • powershell.developer.editorServicesLogLevel: configures the logging verbosity for PowerShell Editor Services. The default log level will now write less logs, improving overall performance

0.3.1

Thursday, December 17, 2015

  • Fix issue #49, Debug Console does not receive script output

0.3.0

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

  • Major improvements in variables retrieved from the debugging service:
    • Global and script scope variables are now accessible
    • New "Auto" scope which shows only the variables defined within the current scope
    • Greatly improved representation of variable values, especially for dictionaries and objects that implement the ToString() method
  • Added new "Expand Alias" command which resolves command aliases used in a file or selection and updates the source text with the resolved command names
  • Reduced default Script Analyzer rules to a minimal list
  • Fixed a wide array of completion text replacement bugs
  • Improved extension upgrade experience

0.2.0

Monday, November 23, 2015

  • (Experimental) Added a new "Run selection" (F8) command which executes the current code selection and displays the output
  • Added a new online help command! Press Ctrl+F1 to get help for the symbol under the cursor.
  • Enabled PowerShell language features for untitled and in-memory (e.g. in Git diff viewer) PowerShell files
  • Added powershell.scriptAnalysis.enable configuration variable to allow disabling script analysis for performance (issue #11)
  • Fixed issue where user's custom PowerShell snippets did not show up
  • Fixed high CPU usage when completing or hovering over an application path

0.1.0

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Initial release with the following features:

  • Syntax highlighting
  • Code snippets
  • IntelliSense for cmdlets and more
  • Rule-based analysis provided by PowerShell Script Analyzer
  • Go to Definition of cmdlets and variables
  • Find References of cmdlets and variables
  • Document and workspace symbol discovery
  • Local script debugging and basic interactive console support