PowerShell tools for Visual Studio (poshtools) had a major release this month, the culmination of about six months of contributions from Microsoft employees. The highlights include:

• 64-bit support.
• Remote sessions.
• Remote debugging.
• IntelliSense improvements.

I switched from the Sapien Suite in early 2014 after changing jobs. Getting a new license wouldn’t have been difficult, but I was never thrilled with it and after re-examining the field of PowerShell editors it seemed like poshtools had crossed the “good enough” threshold. Plus I already was covered by a VS license. Score.

The only difficulty I’ve had during this time has been IntelliSense support: It was… particular. I don’t think it ever worked with Ctrl-Space and was instead triggered by - and $. I don’t think parameter hints for functions within a script ever worked. This release has fixed those things. Ctrl-Space works, and it works with script-defined functions and parameters. Hoorah!

If you need a good PowerShell editor, and you’re covered by a VS license or are eligible to use the Community Edition, now is a great time to take another look at poshtools. With a bunch of Microsoft employees making major contributions I expect it will be getting even better and at a much faster pace.