v4.0.0 Beta 2

[darkoperator]

Version 4.0.0-beta2

Major release built on community contributions, especially from @MVKozlov for the multi-key trusted host work and the SSH.NET 2025 migration. The "known host" terminology is retired in favour of "trusted host store", reflecting the cleaner abstraction that now backs all three storage backends.

Library

• Upgraded SSH.NET from 2024.0.0 to 2025.1.0. The forked Renci.SshNetDev.dll (Cisco-device patch from Allow the client to initiate the key exchange sshnet/SSH.NET#972) is no longer required and has been dropped.
• New runtime dependency BouncyCastle.Cryptography.dll ships in Assembly/ (transitive from SSH.NET 2025).

Trusted host store (was: known host)

• Renamed all *KnownHost* cmdlets and types to *TrustedHostStore* / *TrustedHost*.
• Multiple host keys per host are now supported — a single hostname can hold multiple key fingerprints (key rotation, multiple algorithms).
• MemoryTrustedHostStore is now the base class for JsonTrustedHostStore and OpenSSHTrustedHostStore; the persistent stores override only the OnKeyUpdated() hook. Eliminates the triplicated CRUD logic from v3.x.
• Default host-key display switched from MD5 to SHA256.
• ~/.poshssh/hosts.json schema changed for multi-key support and is not backward compatible with v3.x. Back up your hosts.json before upgrading.

New cmdlets (binary / C#)

• New-SSHTrustedHost, Add-SSHTrustedHost, Get-SSHTrustedHost, Remove-SSHTrustedHost — were PowerShell functions in v3.x, now C# binary cmdlets.

Renamed cmdlets

• New-SSHMemoryKnownHost → New-SSHMemoryTrustedHostStore
• Get-SSHJsonKnownHost → Get-SSHJsonTrustedHostStore
• Get-SSHOpenSSHKnownHost → Get-SSHOpenSSHTrustedHostStore
• Get-SSHRegistryKnownHost → Get-SSHRegistryTrustedHostStore
• Convert-SSHRegistryToJsonKnownHost → Convert-SSHRegistryToJSonTrustedHost

Authentication and connection

• Support for multiple authentication methods on a single session (backward-compatible) — a password and a key can be supplied together and SSH.NET will try each.
• New -Encoding parameter on session and command cmdlets so non-ASCII output is decoded correctly.

Bug fixes

• Fix Invalid path error when remote path contains an asterisk. #604 and Get-SftpItem gives an error when trying to get a file that contains illegal characters: #533 — command/operation timeout behaviour in Invoke-SSHCommand.
• Fix Path parameter is intepreting wildcard characters #496 and Error uploading file with square brackets in the file name #381 — long-standing edge cases.
• Wildcard * and : characters in remote filenames are now replaced with _ so SCP/SFTP file operations don't fail on Windows-incompatible names.

Project structure

• Removed the legacy .NET Framework 4.7.2 PoshSSH.csproj and the dual-solution layout. A single SDK-style PoshSSH.Core/PoshSSH.Core.csproj targets netstandard2.0 and ships cross-platform (Windows PowerShell 5.1, PowerShell 7.x on Windows/Linux/macOS).
• Source files moved directly into Source/PoshSSH/PoshSSH.Core/ — no more <Compile Link> indirection from a legacy project.
• Deleted dead Get-/Set-SCPFile, Get-/Set-SCPFolder, Get-/Set-SFTPFile, Set-SFTPFolder source files (already unexported in v3.x).
• Removed bin/ build artifacts from version control.

Build and test tooling

• Build-Module.ps1 automates the release pipeline: dotnet build, manifest-driven cmdlet verification in a fresh shell, validation that every RequiredAssemblies and FileList entry exists on disk, and Posh-SSH-{version}.zip packaging with SHA256.
• tests/Posh-SSH.Integration.Tests.ps1 plus tests/Run-IntegrationTests.ps1 — full Pester integration suite covering password auth, key auth, encrypted key auth, SFTP file operations, SCP up/download, port forwarding, and session cleanup.
• tests/Setup-LinuxTestVm.sh — root-runnable Linux VM provisioning script that creates 12 SSH test accounts covering the full auth matrix: password, RSA 2048/4096, RSA with passphrase, RSA PKCS#1 PEM, Ed25519 ±passphrase, ECDSA P-256/P-384/P-521, multi-factor AuthenticationMethods publickey,password, and forced keyboard-interactive.
• tests/README.md documents the suite.

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This discussion was created from the release v4.0.0 Beta 2.