Windows PowerShell is indeed a very powerful tool that is available on Windows operating systems. Recently, Microsoft introduced PowerShell Core and made it available on other platforms including Linux and macOS too. Now, Microsoft has announced the General Availability of PowerShell version 7.
PowerShell v7
This is a direct jump of PowerShell from version 6.2 to version 7. Talking about the reasons in this version jump, Microsoft said,
PowerShell Core usage has grown significantly in the last two years. In particular, the bulk of our growth has come from Linux usage, an encouraging statistic given our investment in making PowerShell viable cross-platform…
However, we also can clearly see that our Windows usage has not been growing as significantly, surprising given that PowerShell was popularized on the Windows platform…
This means that Windows PowerShell and PowerShell Core users will be able to use the same version of PowerShell to automate across Windows, Linux, and macOS and on Windows, and PowerShell 7 users will have a very high level of compatibility with Windows PowerShell modules they rely on today.
This simply means that Microsoft wants to align all versions of PowerShell available on different platforms to be aligned together. This will result in better cross-platform compatibility. Also, Microsoft is making some changes to the Support Cycle of PowerShell accordingly. The release of LTS (Long Term Servicing) and non-LTS versions of PowerShell 7 will be aligned closely with .NET Core support lifecycle. PowerShell 7 will be available on Windows operating systems. However, Microsoft will allow the users to switch better PowerShell 7 and PowerShell 5.1.
PowerShell 7’s feature planning is not yet finished and hence will be made available in the near future, but you can expect it to be rolling out sometime in May 2019.
Read more about it in the official blog post here.
