2017-08-05

Porting PSRAW to PowerShell Core: Lessons Learned

psraw3

Intro

I took a significant break from commits to my PSRAW project. I have spent that time learning more about Open Source projects and Object Oriented Programming. Before I could move the project forward I had some architectural decisions to make and I don't have quite enough knowledge to make those decisions yet, but I'm getting there.

On July 14th, this blog from Microsoft dropped a bit of a bombshell on the PowerShell community by making it clear the path forward is in PowerShell Core.Windows PowerShell will still be developed/maintained, but the primary focus will be PowerShell Core. There was also a call to test out PowerShell Gallery modules. I put off the leap to Core for awhile, but it seemed that now was the time. My module is still young and flexible and I suspected that most of it would work on Core.

Shortly after that blog post, I  unleashed the Kraken and created a new branch in my local PSRAW repo named CoreRefactor, installed PowerShellCore 6.0.0-beta.4, switched VS Code to use PowerShell Core for the integrated terminal, and fired up my pester tests. Thus flowed a glorious sea of red failures and errors. This kicked off 2 weeks of refactoring. I wanted to share what I have learned from the experience.

At the time of this post PowerShellCore 6.0.0-beta.5 has just been released. I just completed my test against it. So everything in this post is at least relevant to that release.