René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"PowerShell needs a way to hide commands which won't work","articleBody":"For example: `Set-ExecutionPolicy`.  This command should simply _not exist_ on Linux.  Rather than throwing `RuntimeErrorException` _**terminating** errors_, I would prefer to get a command-not found, because that's something I can test for _ahead of time_.\n\nYears of developing for moving targets on the web has taught us that the right way to avoid features that don't exist is to **test for the feature**, and _not_ for the underlying OS, Architecture, or software version, because you never know when someone's going to finally figure out how to implement something.\n\nIf non-functioning commands are not **hidden**, there is no easy, fast way for scripts to test for whether commands will work -- you have to run them and catch the exception. However, many scripters will _instead_ write incorrect conditional code _based on the PSEdition_ (or operating system sniffing, but currently that's not even in `$PSVersionTable` #1997)  which will prevent them from using the feature in the case where it's added later on.\n\nIn general, when a (core) module exposes a command (functioning or not), it's more difficult for _another_ module to provide an implementation -- I know we can't anyway in this particular example, but that's the problem with picking examples ;-)\n## Suggestion: This should be exposed in the manifest.\n\nI would like an easy way to identify commands that should be exported _based on **PSEdition**, **PSVersion**, **OS**, or **Architecture**_ from the module manifest.\n\nI don't want to have to wrap binary modules in script modules to put conditional Export-ModuleManifest statements in ... especially since putting the _right_ values in the manifest for exported cmdlets is vital to discoverability.\n\nOne thought is to allow specific module manifests for platforms, like `MyModule.Core-Linux.psd1` or something -- this would provide solutions to other design problems as well (like loading the right binary assemblies).\n","author":{"url":"https://github.com/Jaykul","@type":"Person","name":"Jaykul"},"datePublished":"2016-08-21T19:05:51.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":12},"url":"https://github.com/1998/PowerShell/issues/1998"}