RFC: v2021.2.0 Release Goals

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 #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.

[rkeithhill]

FWIW I’d be willing to give up just about every other feature in order to get reliable auto-completion. That is obviously a bit of an overstatement but … I can’t help but wonder that as more & more features got added to the extension, we forgot to take care of job # 1 - auto-completion. Put another way, I’d love to see way more investment in “fixing” the extension and way less investment in adding more features. 😃

[andschwa]

I’d love to see way more investment in “fixing” the extension and way less investment in adding more features.

I’m glad to hear that, as that’s exactly our plan!