Shell Vs Powershell Integrated Console In Visual Studio Code

usecase

• The aim of this explanation💡 is the difference between 1) and 2)

• Encountered while setting up Pester Unit Testing Framework in VSCode

1. Shell in the integrated terminal

• this OS shell that you can default to (pwsh, powershell, bash, …)
• it has no special integration with the files being edited in the editor
• they show by their executable file name in the dropdown list in the integrated terminal’s toolbar, e.g. pwsh

2. Powershell Integrated Console

• special shell that comes with PowerShell extension
• offers integration with the code being edited
• provides linting and debugging support

3. Select Default shell for integrated console

• Within Powershell Integrated Console you can choose what version of PowerShell you default to
• PowerShell Core
• Windows Powershell
• This config is not intuitive at all — my default profile takes ~5 seconds to load, not acceptable in for development there I need to restart sessions regularly when writing scripts

Use the following steps to choose the version:
* Open the Command Palette on Windows or Linux with Ctrl+Shift+P. On macOS, use Cmd+Shift+P.
* Search for Session.
* Click on PowerShell: Show Session Menu.
* Choose the version of PowerShell you want to use from the list, for example PowerShell Core.

— From Using Visual Studio Code for PowerShell Development — PowerShell @ Microsoft Docs

4. list used sources

• https://stackoverflow.com/a/60132705/11082684
• Using Visual Studio Code for PowerShell Development — PowerShell @ Microsoft Docs

Originally published at http://pavol.kutaj.com on February 6, 2021.