RFC: v2021.2.0 Release Goals

[andyleejordan]

Hi all,

As the new maintainer of the Visual Studio Code PowerShell Extension and PowerShell Editor Services, I am planning to make a new stable release this (or potentially next) month! The last stable release was June, 2020, or almost 9 months ago, with preview releases in July and September. Here are my specific goals for doing so:

Goals

• Establish a baseline. As a new maintainer, I need to draw a line (i.e. version) between changes from the last stable release up to now for both the extension and the LSP server. This line needs to be drawn before I can safely make significant changes in order to facilitate isolating and debugging any reported issues.
• Provide users a long-awaited update to reduce dependence on the preview releases. My hope is that telemetry data supports my hypothesis that the latest preview release has been sufficiently tested in the wild, and so is safe to move forward with quickly.
• Learn and document our release process. By doing this upfront, I intend to empower myself to make more frequent releases with additional improvements.

Non-goals

• Further alter the codebase before releasing, including underlying dependencies (except the LSP server, which I now maintain as well). I'd prefer to include major dependency updates in the first release after this one so that we can test it thoroughly.
• Include prototype/experimental features, such as the VS Code Notebook APIs. With respect to the Notebook API in particular, per Remove Notebook API support #3176 we are unable to maintain it currently as it was unfinished, and so cannot be shipped in a stable release.
• Maintain concurrent releases, such as a "preview" release alongside this stable release. I'd like to ship a single stable release, with previews as simply beta versions of upcoming releases.

Tasks

• Ship latest preview as new stable (i.e., release off master)
• Update incorrect extension metadata which indicates the stable release to be a preview build in the VS Code marketplace
• Ship with PSScriptAnalyzer version 1.19.1 (free by shipping off master)
• Release last preview at v2021.2.0-preview with PSES at v2.3.0-preview.3

RC

These are simply my first draft of goals, and they are open for discussion! Thanks ahead of time for your input.

[andyleejordan]

To this end my tentative plan is to simply release off the tip of master after reviewing as well as I can the changes made since v2020.6.0.

[SydneyhSmith]

Thanks for putting this together, really helpful for drawing clarity! One minor goal I'd like to add for this stable release is to update incorrect extension metadata which indicates the stable release to be a preview build in the VSCode marketplace

[rjmholt]

/cc @bergmeister @JamesWTruher @daxian-dbw

[bergmeister]

Just some useful information around the PSScriptAnalyzer version:
The stable version still ships with 1.19.0 but the preview version has shipped with 1.19.1 and proved many times that nearly all new issues (mostly formatting bugs) that were raised in the past months were already fixed in 1.19.1 (which is currently the latest version) and people confirmed by either switching to preview or installing the latest PSSA version locally (which always trumps the shipped version due to PSModulePath order). As of right now, I am not aware of any bug report that would show a regression from 1.19.0 to 1.19.1.
Therefore I feel strong about the next stable version to ship with PSSA 1.19.1, no matter if you base it off the last release branch or the last preview/master, in the latter case nothing needs to be done but in the former, you'd need to cherry-pick those PRs:

• Expose new rule PSAvoidUsingDoubleQuotesForConstantString added in PSSA 1.19.1 PowerShellEditorServices#1333
• Expose new formatter setting powershell.codeFormatting.useConstantStrings from PSSA 1.19.1 #2831

[JustinGrote]

@andschwa Welcome! And this looks like a reasonable forward plan to me, thank you for providing a roadmap.

[SeeminglyScience]

@andschwa Welcome to the project! 🙂

If you have any questions about the code base or project history feel free to tag me or reach out on the PowerShell discord.

[pcgeek86]

I've been regularly checking to see if any new releases have been planned. Glad to finally see that someone is picking this up and taking ownership. I imagine that there are tons of people out there using vscode-powershell who would enjoy an improved user experience.

[andyleejordan]

Thanks all for the warm welcome! I agree with including PSScriptAnalyzer version 1.19.1, and I wanted to release off the tip of master anyway so that works out. I've added a list of tasks to the issue description (by no means exhaustive, just as reminders).