There’ve been so many under-the-radar announcements and news bits about PowerShell, that I thought it’d be worth a quick start-of-the-week, pre-holiday roundup.
First off, the big news is that **Windows Management Framework v5 has been released to manufacturing (RTM). **Not that there’s any real “manufacturing” anymore, but this means we’ve hit the milestone where it’s “done.” Now, if Microsoft is smart, whatever WMF ships with Win2016 will be “5.1” or something, so we can all keep track of what’s what. Fingers crossed on that.
Next, and you may have missed this, Microsoft is moving away from Connect and over to UserVoice for many products, and PowerShell is now amongst them. Spread the word on this, because feedback is super-important, the team _actually does listen, _and UserVoice is now where it’ll happen.
In the continuing move to open source, the PowerShell team **released a bunch of their tests on GitHub. **These are some of the tests they use to test PowerShell itself, and the ability for everyone to now contribute to those means the team can produce more error free code for us. This is a big deal, and proves this isn’t your grandfather’s Microsoft anymore.
The **DSC Documentation has also been open sourced, **meaning we can all finally contribute to that. Yeah, we all know Microsoft should be producing their own docs - and they are - but this lets us correct errors, add examples and expansions, and fill in the gaps Microsoft may have to leave. They’re not a bundle of infinite resources, after all, and this finally lets us help each other in a more effective way.
The PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2016 is about 1/3 sold-out. Currently, only 4-day registration is available. In February, we’ll begin offering any remaining seats for 3-day attendance as well as 4-day. We don’t recommend waiting much longer, because when we hit most people’s new fiscal year next month, it’ll be downhill to “sold out” again. Remember that registration cuts off at the beginning of March 2016, too.
Finally, the Scripting Games puzzles continue to be posted at the start of each month (usually the first Saturday). We’re actively looking for a moderator to take over the process of collecting puzzle submissions from the community, coordinating puzzle and solution posting, and reviewing community submissions for noteworthy ones to call out. If you’re interested, drop an e-mail to admin here at PowerShell.org. We already have content for January and February 2016, and are also looking for puzzle submissions. Drop an e-mail if you’d like to contribute a puzzle and a solution.
Happy Holidays from everyone here at PowerShell.org, and we wish you all the best in the coming new year!