Psremoting with Prefix causes intellisense to go wild

[mattshortland]

Hi all,

I am using the powershell preview and vscode insiders.

I import a module with a prefix eg.

Import-PSSession $EXOSession -prefix O365 -AllowClobber

when i run any commands i get this issue and the console locks up and cannot be recovered until it has finished searching help

Notice it doubles the Prefix in searching help.

Get-Help 100% Searching Help for New-O365O365ActiveSyncDeviceAccessRule ...
Get-Help 100% Searching Help for New-O365O365ActiveSyncDeviceAccessRule ...
Get-Help 100% Searching Help for New-O365O365ActiveSyncDeviceAccessRule ...
Get-Help 100% Searching Help for New-O365O365Mailbox ...
Get-Help 100% Searching Help for New-O365O365Mailbox ...
Get-Help 10% Searching Help for New-O365O365Mailbox ...

[mattshortland]

This happens when i highlight an area in the command with the mouse to copy or paste information

[nakosenk]

This is likely caused by the same root problem I came across with the RemoteDesktop module that I ran into here.

[TylerLeonhardt]

@nakosenk did you also import the module with a prefix?

[nakosenk]

I did not import it with a prefix, but it's one of the few Microsoft modules that specifies a Prefix in its module manifest.

[TylerLeonhardt]

it's one of the few Microsoft modules that specifies a Prefix in its module manifest.

Very good to know.

[TylerLeonhardt]

Thanks for the info, @bobthewonderdog ! Can you also attach the logs here so we can get a better idea of what's going on?

[TylerLeonhardt]

when i run any commands i get this issue and the console locks up and cannot be recovered until it has finished searching help

For each item you are looking at in intellisense, we run Get-Help to give you the extra info you see (Parameter details, help text, etc). That is by design in the PowerShell extension:

The odd part here is that for cmdlets that use prefix, Get-Help seems to be slower than normal and the progress text shows a duplicate prefix.

You can verify this in PowerShell:

Import-PSSession $EXOSession -prefix O365 -AllowClobber
Get-Command "New-O365ActiveSyncDeviceAccessRule" | Get-Help

When I run that ^ (well for me I just imported a module with a prefix...) the progress text shows:

Get-Help 100% Searching Help for New-O365O365ActiveSyncDeviceAccessRule ...

with the duplicate prefix... but the operation seems to work as expected...

That makes this (and @nakosenk's issue) a PowerShell bug which has two problems:

• The prefix is duplicated in the progress text - a purely cosmetic issue
• Get-Help is slow when dealing with a cmdlet that has a prefix...

Can one of you open an issue on each of these things over in https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell

[TylerLeonhardt]

I think given Get-Help's poor perf, we may need to skip over running Get-Help for cmdlets with a prefix...

[nakosenk]

I haven't had a chance to try it, but the underlying problem might be with CommandInfo.ToString(). When converting a CommandInfo object to a string, it duplicates the prefix, but accessing the Name property gives the correct correct name.

In CommandHelpers.cs, when it builds the call to Get-Command, it passes the name of the command directly which does not duplicate the prefix. But when building the call to Get-Help, it passes the whole CommandInfo object. Changing the argument to be commandInfo.Name should probably resolve the problem.

[TylerLeonhardt]

@nakosenk yep great find. I was just about to make that exact change :)

Please do open an issue on PowerShell about CommandInfo.ToString() and how it causes Get-Help to fail.

[TylerLeonhardt]

PR out (for the extension) ^