State of the Shell - Sidney Smith, Steven Bucher - PSConfEU 2023
Sydney Smith and Steven Bucher, PMs on the PowerShell team at Microsoft, kick of the "State of the Shell", episode 2023 live from PowerShell Conference Europe.
In their own words:
Our main goal is to make your jobs easier and improve your lives with PowerShell and its tools. We encourage everyone to engage with us during this conference to discuss how we can better serve you.
As we dive into the podcast, we highlight that PowerShell is now 16 years old and has come a long way. It has revolutionized the world of different tools by becoming the glue language that binds them together. With its introduction of commandlets, PowerShell ensures consistency and offers a syntax suitable for both scripting and interactive shell use. We emphasize that PowerShell is focused on security, testability, supportability, consistency, scalability, discoverability, extensibility, and reliability - all to empower users in solving real challenges.
Keeping up with the evolution of technology, PowerShell has adapted to a cross-platform, multi-cloud world while staying true to its core principles. The community has embraced PowerShell, using it to solve real-world problems. To cater to the evolving needs of the community, we are constantly expanding the PowerShell toolset.
Automation is a key focus for us, as we aim to simplify operations and improve efficiency. We believe that AI, despite its current complexities, has the potential to accelerate work. We envision PowerShell as the glue language that helps users interact with and effectively utilize new technologies. Our commitment to moving forward and providing a consistent platform for managing the evolving tech landscape remains steadfast.
Throughout the podcast, we discuss various updates and improvements in PowerShell, including proactive security features. We have released 27 versions of PowerShell, including LTS versions and preview releases, with the aim of delivering updates every month. We emphasize the importance of easy feedback and an agile approach to fix and improve features. Experimental features, such as PowerShell predictors, are focused on enhancing the interactive experience and scripting experience in the shell.
We introduce Windows Terminal, a powerful and customizable terminal for Windows users. One of its notable features is tabs, which allows users to easily manage multiple sessions. In Windows PowerShell, we showcase the default error view and the concise error view introduced in PowerShell 7, alongside the "get error" cmdlet for more detailed error information. Another highlight is the Secret Management module, enabling users to securely retrieve and set secrets from various extension vaults. We emphasize the versatility of notebooks in VS Code, which combine executable code and markdown seamlessly.
An in-depth explanation of secret management follows, highlighting the registration and usage of different vaults, such as Secret Store and Azure Key Vault. We underline the benefits of secret management, such as securely storing secrets and providing a better solution for scripts using SecureString. Moving on, we shift the focus to Azure Cloud Shell, an always up-to-date gateway to cloud management accessible through the Azure portal. We talk about its pre-authenticated access to the Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell, along with upcoming improvements, such as ephemeral sessions and a revamped user experience.
We then introduce Crescendo, a declarative accelerator that transforms console commands into PowerShell cmdlets. It simplifies working with console commands and enables users to enjoy the benefits of PowerShell scripting. In conjunction, we highlight various Crescendo modules available on the PowerShell gallery for seamless integration with native executables.