PSResourceInfo object does not properly sort versions

Prerequisites

• Write a descriptive title.
• Make sure you are able to repro it on the latest released version
• Search the existing issues.

Steps to reproduce

I should be able to sort resources by their version but this does not work as expected. This does not work due to PowerShellGet 3.0.11-beta splitting up semantic versioning into two different properties Version [System.Version] and PrereleaseLabel [String] on the PSResourceInfo type.

PowerShellGet 3.0.11-beta already takes a dependency on Nuget.Versioning.dll which contains [NuGet.Versioning.NuGetVersion] type that can handle traditional [Version] as well as [SemanticVersion].

Related issue https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/issues/2983, https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShellGet/issues/83

cc: @jaykul

Expected behavior

Should be able to properly sort resources by version.

Actual behavior

Sorting does not take into account semantic versioning.

Error details

No response

Environment data

PS C:\> Get-Module -Name PowerShellGet

ModuleType Version    PreRelease Name                                ExportedCommands
---------- -------    ---------- ----                                ----------------
Binary     3.0.11     beta       PowerShellGet                       {Find-PSResource, Get-InstalledPSResource, Get-PS…

PS C:\> $PSVersionTable

Name                           Value
----                           -----
PSVersion                      7.2.0-preview.8
PSEdition                      Core
GitCommitId                    7.2.0-preview.8
OS                             Microsoft Windows 10.0.19043
Platform                       Win32NT
PSCompatibleVersions           {1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0…}
PSRemotingProtocolVersion      2.3
SerializationVersion           1.1.0.1
WSManStackVersion              3.0

Visuals

No response

[Jaykul]

tl;dr: These objects should have a SemanticVersion property so we can sort by that.

To make | Sort Version work the way it’s described, you would have to change the Version property.

But let’s try to think about this a different way. Imagine that you actually followed SemVer with this module…

Instead of this:

You would have published:

Name          Version  Prerelease
----          -------  ----------
PowerShellGet 3.0.0.0  beta12    
PowerShellGet 3.0.0.0  beta11    
PowerShellGet 3.0.0.0  beta10    

So, if we had those three packages in a $Modules array and we wanted to invert the sort order so the newest is last, how would we do that? Currently, we can’t unless we create a new property to sort by:

Update-TypeData -MemberName SemanticVersion -MemberType ScriptProperty -Value {
  [System.Management.Automation.SemanticVersion]($this.Version, $this.PrereleaseLabel -join "-")
} -TypeName Microsoft.PowerShell.PowerShellGet.UtilClasses.PSResourceInfo 

So that we can do this:

$Modules | Sort SemanticVersion

[StevenBucher98]

Thanks @ThomasNieto! We will make this change soon, we will try to get this in for the next release as well.