Feedback needed: Try out a preview of integrated console support!

[daviwil]

I've been working hard over the last few weeks to bring a fully integrated PowerShell console to VS Code via the PowerShell extension. The work isn't finished yet but I wanted to share a preview release to get some initial feedback which will help guide the final steps to getting this released in 0.8.0 in late October.

The most interesting thing about this feature is that it uses the standard PowerShell console host to provide the interactive console experience. This is an improvement over what you get in the ISE because you're writing and testing your code in the standard PowerShell host rather than one developed specifically for the editor.

I've only tested this on Windows 10 with PowerShell v5 and v6 and on Windows 7 with PowerShell v3. Would certainly appreciate to hear whether it works on Windows 8 with PowerShell v4 as well (plus any other combination of Windows/PowerShell versions).

NOTE: This only works on Windows right now because I need to do some extra work to make the console launching operate correctly on OS X and Linux. I might send out an update of the preview within the next few days with full OS X and Linux support.

Disclaimer: USE AT YOUR OWN RISK

I have not followed the usual process of getting binaries signed for release because I just wanted to quickly get some feedback on this new feature without a full release process. As such, I am required to point out that downloading and using this preview is done at your own risk. Consult the project license for full legalese ;)

How to install and use it

• Install the latest Visual Studio Code Insiders release. This package does not work with the stable VS Code release (depends on APIs that haven't been released yet)
• Download this ZIP file and extract it into your $HOME\.vscode-insiders\extensions folder.
• Load up a PowerShell project and open a .ps1 or .psm1 file. The PowerShell console should open up shortly after and drop you directly into a PowerShell prompt.

Things to try

• Use the F8 hotkey to execute code from an editor tab like you would in the ISE. Does it do what you expect?
• Define a function in the console and then try to get IntelliSense for it in the editor
• Call Get-Credential or any other cmdlet that never worked right for you in VS Code.
• Use the psedit command to open a file (same as in the ISE)
• Try any of the $psEditor API methods from within the console
• Change the powershell.developer.powerShellExePath setting to point to an installation of PowerShell Core on your Windows machine then restart VS Code. You should get the same console experience for both full PowerShell and the new open-source release of PowerShell.
• Change the powershell.useX86Host setting to true if you want to try using the same experience with the 32-bit PowerShell console in a 64-bit Windows install. This also requires a restart of VS Code.

Things that don't work

• Probably a lot. I would not use this for real development yet, it's just a preview of what's coming next.
• PSReadline does not work. I need to work with @lzybkr to come up with a way to coordinate my usage of the runspace with PSReadline's. If you load the PSReadline module into your session, all language features will stop working.
• Script debugging mostly doesn't work. I need to do some hacking magic to make our existing debugging experience work with the console host's debugging implementation.
• Remote PowerShell sessions should work but IntelliSense and other language features will not be aware of the session. I'm planning to fix this before the official update.

Updates to the preview

As you report issues, I'll try to push out a few updates to the preview to resolve any major problems. I'll update this issue with the latest download links as we go.

[jvheaton]

Couple things I have noticed.

1. Console threw an error on opening. Went back an unblocked the zip file and reloaded and then worked.
2. Tab completion in console seems to duplicate when having issues finding the ex. [cd '.\Program Files (x86)\EMET 5.5'cd '.\Program Files (x86)\EMET 5.5'] - Attaching Image.
   

[daviwil]

Hmmm, weird. I'm surprised the that the ZIP file would have caused a problem. Do you have the error handy? If not that's OK.

Not sure why the tab completion would be messed up there, got a screenshot of that?

Thanks for the help!

[mattmcnabb]

The ZIP file wouldn't cause an issue - Windows saw this as a remote file and then when you extract, all the extracted files will be remote as well. You just have to unblock the ZIP before you extract.

[mattmcnabb]

• Running selections seems to do what is expected and variables, function definitions, etc. are available in the console. F5 still runs in the debugger, but I suppose that's to be expected.
• PSEdit works fine for me.
• $PSEditor also seems to work in the console, at least at a basic level.
• No issues using Get-Credential. Didn't know this was a problem before.
• Doesn't load my profile. This might be intentional and I haven't dug in to check on this yet.
• Ctrl-C doesn't seem to do anything. Could be because this is an editor action for copying?

[gerane]

@daviwil could you do a powershell-preview or similar extension and put it in the marketplace?

[gerane]

I'm interested to see if this fixes run selection for me. It was broken with current console. @Tyriar was hoping this integration will get that working. It currently doesn't treat code blocks as a whole, but instead each line individually.

[daviwil]

@gerane Yeah, I've considered that recently, might try it at some point.

@mattmcnabb Thanks for the notes! And thanks for reminding me about profile, I forgot to mention that this should be loading the Microsoft.VSCode_profile.ps1 instead of the standard ConsoleHost profile. If people end up disliking that behavior I'm happy to change it.

Ctrl+C definitely works for me if I'm running a script and want to cancel its execution. Does it work for you in that case? If not then it may be an issue I need to investigate.

[gerane]

@mattmcnabb ctrl+c has been broken in the integrated terminal for a while. If you highlight text it will copy, but if you highlight text or use ctrl+c in the prompt portion it throws an error. Do you can't break out of running code. It's one of my biggest gripes.

[gerane]

@daviwil do you think your integration fixed the ctrl+c to break or did they just recently fix this in there insiders maybe?

[daviwil]

@gerane Might have been fixed this week at some point in Insiders, I hadn't tried it before that. Has been working well for me!

[gerane]

@daviwil I'll try it in the morning. There was an update towards the end of the day that I didn't install.

[gerane]

@daviwil I realty do think out would be beneficial to have a preview or beta flag for extensions though. I wonder if this has ever been considered.

[daviwil]

Not sure, I was looking for an issue about that on the VS Code repo but didn't see one. I'll file one tomorrow

[Tyriar]

You can add "preview" text as in https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Tyriar.terminal-tabs by adding "preview": true, to your package.json. It only seems to show on the web though, not in-product so I created microsoft/vscode#13276