JOjoeyaiello·May 22, 2017
That list you just provided is actually an AWESOME list of things we should make more accessible/understandable in our documentation. There's a few that would also make great rules for PSScriptAnalzyer[1] (basically our linter; the LiteralPath one in particular would probably be easy to write as a warning).
At this point I should also plug our tooling improvements. First, our VS Code Extension[2] is AWESOME, debugging there has massively improved, there's snippet support for boilerplate with best practices, it integrates directly with PSScriptAnalzyer, and even enables some "quick fix" of linter warnings. We've also got something called Plaster[3] that does templating to encourage best practices (think of it like a "Yeoman for PowerShell").
But yeah, as we craft new docs for writing the best "cross-CLR, cross-platform" (aka universal, aka
Read the rest
portable) PowerShell modules, I want to make sure we tick all these boxes.
Oh, and we believe we addressed the whole "different singleton version on different versions of Windows/WMF" thing by making sure that PowerShell 6[4] is x-copyable, fully side-by-side, and supported downlevel to Windows 7/2008 R2 (though Win7 support is currently busted, we're working through fixing it). If you've got a workload or an application that depends on a new feature of PowerShell, you can include PowerShell 6 app-local, or you can distribute it to machines in an environment through either MSI or a ZIP-based file copy.
As for Microsoft products that support specific versions: again, I totally hear you. The best thing you can do is push on those products their respective feedback mechanisms (almost everything is on the Feedback Hub or some product-specific UserVoice now) to support all versions of PowerShell. In the meantime, the side-by-side nature of PowerShell 6 means you can install the latest version without fear that you'll void your support or break existing scripts/workloads.
[1] https://github.com/PowerShell/PSScriptAnalyzer
[2] https://github.com/PowerShell/vscode-powershell
[3] https://github.com/PowerShell/Plaster
[4] https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell