Subscribe via e-mail: You can download Windows PowerShell 2.0 CTP (Community Technology Preview) now. I just skimmed over the release notes. The number of new features is quite impressive.
I think my four favorite features are especially interesting for administrators.
PowerShell Remoting
This enables you to execute Cmdlets and Scripts remotely. Note that PowerShell 2.0 and WinRM (Windows Remote Management – WS-Man) have to be installed on the remote computers.
Background Jobs
On a UNIX shell you can run a command in the background by just adding “&” to the command. In PowerShell 2.0 you can do it by using the new PSJob cmdlet:
start-psjob -command "command name"
Basically, this means that your command prompt comes back immediately after you launched the script even though the command is still running.
Script Debugging
One reason why I usually prefer to write a little C# program instead of writing a script is because of the great debugging features in Visual Studio. With PowerShell 2.0 Microsoft added some essential debugging capabilities to PowerShell. You can now set breakpoints and specify certain actions when your script hits them.
Graphical PowerShell
For me this is the most interesting new feature. It is not just the debugging features I miss when I write a script using a simple text editor. Graphical PowerShell is only an early alpha version, but it already offers some interesting features: interactive shell with syntax coloring, multi-tabbed scripting pane, the ability to run (dot-source) a script or only parts of it, and multiple runspaces (shells). In one of my text post, I will show you some screenshots. Note: Powershell+ is a better PowerShell IDE (Integrated Development Environment): It is still in beta, and the final probably won’t be free. If you know a free PowerShell IDE, please let me know.
A summary of all new PowerShell 2.0 features can be found here.
