TimeSpan Literals and support for TimeSpan objects in Cmdlets such as Start-Sleep

[schuelermine]

RFC corresponding to PowerShell/PowerShell#12305

[msftclas]

All CLA requirements met.

[bpayette]

Please note that this is a breaking change since 15sec is a valid function name:

PS[1] (41) > function 15sec { "Hello" }
PS[1] (42) > 15sec
Hello

[joeyaiello]

Given the comment I left in PowerShell/PowerShell#12305, it'd be awesome to get a couple updates to this RFC to reflect some of what we proposed for moving forward.

At that point, we can add our new Experimental - Approved label to this PR.

[schuelermine]

@joeyaiello
Sorry for not responding any sooner.
Thank you for reviewing this proposal. I’ve read your comment and largely agree.
However, I need to apologize — I’m not very familiar with the RFC developement workflow and as such am unsure as to what’s expected of me; you say that “At this point, we'd be happy to see an experimental feature implementation submitted as a code PR.”, and I’m unsure if I’m required to provide this PR. I’d be happy to do so, but I’m unfortunately not a very experienced programmer and have little to no knowledge of C#.

[schuelermine]

I’m going to update the RFC to reflect the proposed changed soon. Right now I’m somewhat busy, but I’ll get to it in anywhere from 2 hours to 2 days.

[joeyaiello]

No worries at all! Thanks for getting back to us so quickly.

Basically, we're just saying that it's fine to commit the code as you're proposing it, but that it needs to be wrapped as an experimental feature so that we can learn more about how the feature's breaking changes impact real-world scenarios, and then decide further along in the process whether or not the functionality should remain and be on by default in future stable versions of PowerShell (upon which it would no longer be an experimental feature).

If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask!

[vexx32]

@schuelermine I won't lie, getting something like this built in is a chunk of work at some of the deepest levels of the parser and tokenizer. Probably the nearest thing to this proposal is some of my own PRs, some years ago -- probably this one is the best reference to look at: PowerShell/PowerShell#7901

If you're keen on doing the code I'm more than willing to offer help and pointers as best I can. It will likely be a somewhat lengthy process to get the code sorted and get through review.

If you'd rather leave it open for others to sort out the actual implementation that's OK as well, but there are no guarantees that the pwsh team or other community members will necessarily pick it up.

[schuelermine]

OK, I’m going to update the PR today. Sorry for exceeding the maximum delay I set out…

[schuelermine]

OK, I think this is done.

[schuelermine]

Still contains one thing I’m unsure about, would like some feedback on that

[vexx32]

Still contains one thing I’m unsure about, would like some feedback on that

Re: the bit you weren't sure about - no auxiliary parameter should be needed, the parameter binding should be able to resolve the correct parameter based on the argument type.

[schuelermine]

Oh right, we still need to specify that this is an experimental feature flag (initially). I’ll do that in a bit.

[joeyaiello]

Looks great! Thanks for updating the RFC, and per @PowerShell/powershell-committee, feel free to move forward on the experimental implementation in PowerShell/PowerShell.

[schuelermine]

Hey, sorry, I haven’t actually started working on the feature yet, and it’s gonna be slow because I’m currently also working on another non-trivial project (where I’m also a volunteer and behind), but I’m gonna try to be more productive from now on.
(I’ll do stuff on schuelermine/PowerShell.)

[schuelermine]

On another note, is the intent that this PR stays open until the feature is done? As I understood it, this repo’s for suggestions, so I was originally expecting this to be merged if the proposal is accepted. Doesn’t really matter, but I’d still like to know how this is organized.

[schuelermine]

Hi, I just wanted to give an update—I haven’t done anything. I was recently approached to work on another project which has been taking up my time, but I will be getting to trying to make an implementation soon.

[joeyaiello]

@schuelermine : thanks for the updates! The way our current process works, this would remain open until the final code is merged as non-experimental (which should only happen after the feature exists as an experimental feature in preview builds for some length of time).

So it's currently "experimentally approved" for you to start code work (or anyone else that wants to pick it up).

[JamesWTruher]

@PowerShell/powershell-committee reviewed
Timespan is supported via the new -Duration parameter, but because of the breaking nature of the new suffixes, we don't believe this should move forward.