Steve Lee (@SteveL-MSFT) Re PR description - The PR doesn't fix initial request in #3028, it is implement another case.
To address #3028 I created #10965. I think we could implement pwshw in #10965 in the same way as we did an alias for preview-pwsh.

Ilya (@iSazonov) The consensus in the discussion for #3028 is that the solution is to create a pwshw variant instead of continuing to use -WindowStyle Hidden, and this PR does that fairly cleanly.

@alexbuzzbee pwshw is only one option from many in the complex topic. My PR seems add more flexibility and allow to experiment with console, non-console, pseudo-console and GUI modes, and also fix -WindowStyle Hidden scenario.

Ilya (@iSazonov) I don't think the two are mutually exclusive

Steve Lee (@SteveL-MSFT) I updated a description in my PR to clarify my vision.

Steve Lee (@SteveL-MSFT) Some packaging changes are needed:

1. Include pwshw for signing:

   PowerShell/tools/releaseBuild/signing.xml

   Line 25 in 417cbd7

   <file src="__INPATHROOT__\pwsh.exe" signType="AuthenticodeFormer" dest="__OUTPATHROOT__\pwsh.exe" />

2. WXS file needs to be updated
3. Maybe some changes are needed in https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/blob/master/tools/packaging/packaging.psm1
4. Once these changes are done, please scheduled a full signed build on your branch in Azure DevOps.

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Steve Lee (@SteveL-MSFT) Could you please elaborate more about the expectation of pwshw? Like what will not work (will all console related operations not work?)

Dongbo Wang (@daxian-dbw) updated description

No tests running for pwshw.

Ilya (@iSazonov) what do you mean? The additional test was run: https://powershell.visualstudio.com/PowerShell/_build/results?buildId=37337&view=logs&jobId=65e467a7-433b-584d-c8f4-72fcd5732f9d&taskId=6a14d04a-9a6d-5c41-f839-531117eeb032&lineStart=857&lineEnd=858&colStart=1&colEnd=1

I don't think there's a need to rerun all tests with pwshw.exe, it's a compilation flag.

I don't think there's a need to rerun all tests with pwshw.exe, it's a compilation flag.

Why not if we expect that some features will do not work? Are you sure that all feature which must works really works? (In my PR (although another scenario) 66 tests failed in one job)

Ilya (@iSazonov) I'll see about running the tests manually, anything expecting a console won't work as that's the design of being consoleless. Otherwise, pwshw.exe doesn't do much by itself and still relies on ConsoleHost.dll.

Aditya Patwardhan (@adityapatwardhan) mscodehub build succeeded, will fix merge conflict after getting pwshw test results

Steve Lee (@SteveL-MSFT) I tried the artifacts out of the mscodehub build. Does not seem to work :(

Aditya Patwardhan (@adityapatwardhan) pwshw.exe is a Windows App, so it's not associated with the console. You'll need to have it redirect to a file within your command: pwshw -nop -c '$PSVersionTable > ~/out.txt'

Ok, definitely a problem here. Write-Host immediately fails. Need to have it handle the case there is no host.

Ok, definitely a problem here. Write-Host immediately fails. Need to have it handle the case there is no host.

In my PR I follow these cases: (1) AllocConsole() for normal pwsh.exe scenario, (2) AttachConsole(-1) to attach to parent process console in Hidden scenario. This doesn't pass all tests on CIs, I still don't investigate what tests must pass but failed.

Tests completed in 3676.82s
Tests Passed: 7644,
Failed: 127,
Skipped: 335,
Pending: 106,
Inconclusive: 2

Had to use Invoke-Pester since Start-PSPester expects pwsh.exe. Will have to look through the failures.

FYI - #3028 (comment) talks about the console team's work to address this particulat deficiency. It might take some time to come to all Windows versions, but pwshw is a permanent fixture you may need to support forever if you commit to it. 😄

Closing this for now and waiting for Windows solution.

Steve Lee (@SteveL-MSFT) Even if we get this feature in Windows API in future we could merge 90% of this PR today and save your efforts.