What's up with PowerShell ISE help updates?

PowerShell Help
1

Hello powershell.org folk.

I aim to gently ask as gently as I can a question about the notion of “It just works” in regards to the powershell.org software development environment. My question could be easily be perceived as kind of a put-down of the powershell.org community so I want to emphasize from the get-go: that is NOT my intention.

I’ve been using powershell on and off for a long time. I find powershell to be by far the easiest solution to many problems. Of late I’ve found the choco package system to consistently be a very reliable time saver.

My question came about because I am finding myself using powershell quite a bit and I decided to explore the ISE user interface. Step one, I open ISE in the admin mode and go to help. Hmm, there is an update help item in the help menu. That seems prudent, so I click it. I get:

update-help : Failed to update Help for the module(s) ‘ConfigDefender,
Microsoft.WSMan.Management, PSReadline, WindowsUpdateProvider’ with UI culture(s) {en-US} :
Unable to retrieve the HelpInfo XML file for UI culture en-US. Make sure the HelpInfoUri
property in the module manifest is valid or check your network connection and then try the
command again.
At line:1 char:1

  • update-help
  • CategoryInfo : ResourceUnavailable: (:slight_smile: [Update-Help], Exception
  • FullyQualifiedErrorId : UnableToRetrieveHelpInfoXml,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.UpdateH
    elpCommand

This is the kind of result that suggests to me that multiple people have felt it was OK to submit work that egregiously breaks other people’s efforts.

So I wonder, did I get this because I don’t know that Visual Studio is just assumed to be part the environment of users of ISE? Is ISE just not considered a first-class component of the powershell community, so it isn’t worth adopting an “it just works” standard of workmanship? Or is “it just works” just not part of the powershell ethos? Or am I just way off base and there is some other explanation?

I’m looking at powershell, and especially at incorporating some of the old zsh and new RUST system tools into powershell, and wondering if this is a community that would welcome such additions and strive for “it just works” in regards to such additions?

So, with respect, what am I missing? What’s up with PowerShell ISE help updates?

btw: I did find the powershell.org entry suggesting the command:

Update-Help -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Which did seem to suppress the errors and get the Update-Help command to be able to do its thing, such as it is.