Notice of upcoming major version 5 of AWS Tools for PowerShell

This blog was co-authored by Afroz Mohammed and Jonathan Nunn, Software Developers on the AWS PowerShell team.

Today, we want to let the AWS PowerShell community know about our upcoming plans for the AWS Tools for PowerShell. The current AWS Tools for PowerShell V4 is built on the AWS SDK for .NET V3. Recently, the AWS SDK for .NET V4 was announced with its first preview version. We will be releasing AWS Tools for PowerShell V5 based on the SDK’s V4.

Breaking Changes

Along with the AWS SDK for .NET’s changes, we are planning on making the following breaking changes in AWS Tools for PowerShell V5.

• The AWSPowerShell module’s minimum supported PowerShell version will be updated to 5.1. This is to match the AWS SDK for .NET new minimum of .NET Framework 4.7.2.
• The types adopted from the AWS SDK for .NET will use the SDK’s new nullable changes. For example, properties of type int will change to Nullable[int]. Some cmdlet output will change to return $null instead of empty collections.
• The AWSHistory variable, which is used to access the whole AWS API response, will be removed in favor of using the -Select * feature.
• The AWS_PROFILE environment variable will be used when resolving credentials for a cmdlet.

Conclusion

Additional details will be provided in a forthcoming blog post that announces a preview build of version 5. Until then, check out our progress and provide feedback using the version 5 AWS Tools for PowerShell tracker.