What the general availability of PowerShell in Azure Cloud Shell means for users

At the end of October, Microsoft announced the general availability of PowerShell in Azure Cloud Shell, a little more than a year after its initial preview in May, 2017. General availability brings with it updates instituted in the past few months in response to user feedback. The updates fit in with Microsoft's shift to the extensible model, with new commands accessible from PowerShell Gallery that persist across Cloud Shell sessions. The addition of PowerShell to Cloud Shell adds script editing with VIM, which includes IntelliSense and syntax highlighting, and also allows users to manage guest VMs.

With the addition of PowerShell, users gain contextual capabilities like context-sensitive command lists with the Get-AzureRmCommand, as well as resource group scoping for cmdlets. Cloud Shell automatically authenticates subscriptions and will maintain version of PowerShell modules.

For users, the PowerShell update brings some experiential changes.