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For some of you,

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it might matter what PowerShell 7 release branch you install from. Now

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Microsoft has been doing this for a while going back to the PowerShell

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Core days. Organizations have options.

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Many large organizations tend to lean towards the

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long‑term service branch, or LTS.

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This version is synced with the LTS release of .NET

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Core. PowerShell 7 is the LTS release.

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This means it has about three years of support and doesn't need to be updated.

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The branch information is maintained online at this URL. It's

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just a JSON file that you can take a look at.

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The stable branch is the current active PowerShell release,

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and as of the time I'm recording this course,

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this is also PowerShell 7.

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Microsoft typically releases a new stable branch about every six months.

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And if I recall correctly,

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this branch is supported for about a year and a half. And

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this too has a web resource that you can use to determine

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the current stable build.

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Finally, because PowerShell is under a very active development,

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there's almost always a preview build available.

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This is what is coming next. Today,

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PowerShell 7 is in preview. Now, eventually it will be

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released and become the new stable release.

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I assume shortly thereafter we'll see a preview release for PowerShell 7.2.

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And as with the other releases, you can keep track online.

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PowerShell 7 includes a mechanism to notify you of any new updates.

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Now for the most part, most of you probably won't need to do anything.

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However, you can explicitly set an environment variable.

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If you don't set it, PowerShell will use your current branch.

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You might want to set this to LTS if you were on that branch and wanted to

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make sure that your users don't get prompted, or you yourself don't get

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prompted, to update to something other than the LTS release. PowerShell

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will check for updates about every 24 hours. You'll get a notification the

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next time you start PowerShell that there is a new version available for

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you to install.

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But you can disable that notification by setting this

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environmental variable in your PowerShell profile, or

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however you manage environment variables.

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Your other option is to build your own notification system using

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the release channel links I showed you earlier.

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Regardless, Microsoft won't automatically update to

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newer versions of PowerShell. At best, what you'll get is a notification that there's a new update available for you.