Summary: The next steps Microsoft Script Explorer are revealed.
For those who are familiar with Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell, you know that we haven't released additional updates since we published the release candidate (RC) in August 2012. Over the past few months, we have been talking with customers and partners and taking a hard look at the adoption rate of the RC in terms of the number of downloads and the feedback we've received.
One of the results of this analysis was that the adoption and usage of the pre-release versions of Script Explorer were not at the level we had hoped for. Part of this stems from the fact that customers already have a number of options in the market for discovering and sharing Windows PowerShell scripts, and most customers appear content to continue using these existing mechanisms. As a result, we've decided not to bring Script Explorer to RTM.
In the meantime, we will start winding down the Script Explorer project. This will be a gradual process to allow time for existing users to move to other tools. We'll start by removing the RC package from the Download Center this week.
For those who have already downloaded pre-release versions and are actively using Script Explorer in their environments, we will continue to operate the back-end script aggregation service that is used by Script Explorer for a few more months. We plan to turn off the service on June 14, 2013.
To help with migrating from Script Explorer to other solutions, we would like to highlight a few of the existing options that you might find useful for discovering and sharing Windows PowerShell scripts:
PowerShell Code Repository (PoshCode)
PowerShell Plus and PowerShell Scripts by Idera
PowerGUI by Quest
PowerShell Studio by SAPIEN
There are lots of other options. Feel free to add your favorites in the following Comment box.
Thanks,
The Windows PowerShell Team