PowerShell 7.4: Install-Module is evolving.
Where does Install-Module come from?
Install-Module has evolved.
Have you ever asked yourself, what module imports the Install-Module cmdlet?
It’s kind of a meta question, check for yourself! Spoiler a bit down for anyone reading on mobile.
Get-Command -Name Install-Module CommandType Name Version Source
----------- ---- ------- ------
Function Install-Module 2.2.5 PowerShellGetNew sheriff in town ðŸ¤
With the GA release of PowerShell 7.4 a rewrite of PowerShellGet is included, (hint hint, renamed to PSResourceGet), and boy is it fast.
I installed PowerShell 7.4 on two different Ubuntu 20.04 WSL distros, and I installed a few modules to benchmark the old trusty Install-Module and the new sheriff in town: Install-PSResource.
The results speak for themselves. PSResourceGet is much faster then PowerShellGet V2.
Speaking about PowerShellGet V2, there’s still a future for this module, but instead of new APIs and features, V3 (currently in pre-release) was converted to a compatibility layer over to the new and faster PSResourceGet.
Install-Module -Name PowerShellGet -AllowPrerelease -ForceThe parameters of the new PSResourceGet is not supported from calling the older cmdlets, and there’s no official documentation out for PowerShellGet V3 yet, so to me this seems purely for pipeline scenarios where you have code in place that can just use the new functionality. It has less to do with interactive use it seems. Here’s some further reading on the subject.
Let’s take PSResourceGet for a spin
PSResourceGet seem to me an awesome new module based on it’s speed, so better get used to it’s new syntax because this will be my new main driver for sure.
Get-Command -Module Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet | sort NameCommandType Name Version Source
----------- ---- ------- ------
Cmdlet Find-PSResource 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet
Cmdlet Get-InstalledPSResource 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet
Alias Get-PSResource 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet
Cmdlet Get-PSResourceRepository 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet
Cmdlet Get-PSScriptFileInfo 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet
Function Import-PSGetRepository 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet
Cmdlet Install-PSResource 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet
Cmdlet New-PSScriptFileInfo 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet
Cmdlet Publish-PSResource 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet
Cmdlet Register-PSResourceRepository 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet
Cmdlet Save-PSResource 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet
Cmdlet Set-PSResourceRepository 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet
Cmdlet Test-PSScriptFileInfo 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet
Cmdlet Uninstall-PSResource 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet
Cmdlet Unregister-PSResourceRepository 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet
Cmdlet Update-PSModuleManifest 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet
Cmdlet Update-PSResource 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet
Cmdlet Update-PSScriptFileInfo 1.0.1 Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGetWhat’s installed?
It’s not only installing modules that’s faster, it’s also very fast at getting installed modules.
Getting installed modules can be very time-consuming on shared systems, especially where you have the az modules installed, so this is a great performance win overall.
Find new stuff
Finding new modules and scripts is also a crucial part of PowerShell, especially for the community members. I would argue with PSResourceGet going GA, PowerShell 7.4 is probably one of the most significant performance boosters of PowerShell (in it’s open source life).
As you can see, finding modules is way faster, and here we’re even using two-way wildcards.
What about publishing?
Let’s try to use the new Publish-PSResource. I have a minor bug-fix to do on my project linuxinfo and will edit my publishing script so that github action will publish it for me using Publish-PSResource.
I start with editing my very simple publishing script. Since I don’t know if the github-hosted runner will have PSResourceGet installed yet, I need to validate that the cmdlet is present before calling it. If it’s not, I’m simply installing it using PowerShellGet v2.
This should do it!
Hmm, seems like I messed something up. The Github-hosted runner can’t find Publish-PSResource so, it’s trying to install PSResourceGet using Install-Module. However I miss-spelled the module name if you look closely at line 7. It should be Microsoft.PowerShell.PSResourceGet, let’s fix that and re-run my workflow.
Looks way better now!
And there’s a new version of linuxinfo with a minor bugfix. And the Publish-PSResource migration was very straightforward.
Conclusion
In this post, we learned about the origin of Install-Module, being PowerShellGet v2, and it’s predecessor Install-PSResource, being PSResourceGet. We took some cmdlets for a spin and realized that, the new version is easily twice as fast, in some cases even 3 times faster.
We covered PowerShellGet V3 being a compatibility layer and some caveats with it.
We looked at migrating a simple publishing script from Publish-Module to Publish-PSResource.
I recommend to poke around with the new PSResourceGet cmdlets and read it’s official documentation, and for interactive use not rely on any compatibility layer, save that for the edge-cases.
Thanks for reading this far, hope you found it helpful. PM me on twitter for any feedback.