Understand PowerShell version

Question

I have a VPS with PowerShell installed. How do I know if it's a RTM or CTP?

I ran $host.Version and I got :

Major  Minor  Build  Revision
-----  -----  -----  --------
2      0      -1     -1

WTF are the minus-one's? I've never seen negative numbers for any of a version fragments..

Answer 1

It seems that the more conventional way of getting the version number is using the $PSVersionTable which gives a build version value. Although $PSVersionTable.PSVersion gives me what you get.. Hmm -ve builds!!

If it makes you feel any better, I'm running PS Version 2 RTM on Windows 7 and i get the same result as you. My $PSVersionTable.BuildVersion is 6.1.7600.16385 which is the same version number i get when i look at the product version on the powershell.exe with:

(gcm "$PSHome\PowerShell.exe").FileVersionInfo.ProductVersion

Answer 2

You can get a little more detailed information like this:

PS > $PSVersionTable

Name                           Value
----                           -----
CLRVersion                     2.0.50727.4200
BuildVersion                   6.0.6002.18139
PSVersion                      2.0
WSManStackVersion              2.0
PSCompatibleVersions           {1.0, 2.0}
SerializationVersion           1.1.0.1
PSRemotingProtocolVersion      2.1

And

PS > $Host


Name             : ConsoleHost
Version          : 2.0
InstanceId       : [obscured]
UI               : System.Management.Automation.Internal.Host.InternalHostUserI
                   nterface
CurrentCulture   : en-US
CurrentUICulture : en-US
PrivateData      : Microsoft.PowerShell.ConsoleHost+ConsoleColorProxy
IsRunspacePushed : False
Runspace         : System.Management.Automation.Runspaces.LocalRunspace

I would interpret the "-1" values as "not applicable".