🩹 [Patch]: Enable Context Sharing Across PowerShell Processes and Runspaces

[Copilot]

This release refactors context management to be entirely disk-based, enabling robust context sharing and synchronization across scripts, modules, jobs, and processes.

• Fixes 🩹 [Patch]: Enable Context Sharing Across PowerShell Processes and Runspaces #87

Key Changes

• Shared context vault: Contexts are now stored and managed on disk. All scripts, runspaces, and processes interact with the same set of context files, ensuring that context data is always current and consistent.
• Improved support for parallelism: Multiple PowerShell jobs or sessions can safely create, update, or remove contexts simultaneously, without risking stale or conflicting data.
• Accurate tab completion: Argument completers now enumerate context IDs directly from disk, providing up-to-date options for tab completion.
• Optimized metadata access: Commands like Get-ContextInfo perform quick metadata lookups by reading only the necessary file information, improving performance.
• Lean initialization: The module no longer loads contexts into memory on import, reducing resource usage and simplifying module behavior.

Impact for Integrators

• Modules and scripts can now rely on a single, shared context vault across all PowerShell processes.
• There is no risk of working with outdated or inconsistent context data.
• No changes are needed to existing command usage; standard commands (Get-Context, Set-Context, etc.) will now always reflect the true state on disk.
• These improvements make the module suitable for use in advanced automation, CI/CD workflows, and other scenarios involving parallel or distributed execution.

This update ensures reliable, up-to-date context management for all usage patterns, including concurrent and multi-process environments.

Core Changes

• Get-Context: Now reads and decrypts context files directly from the vault directory each time called
• Get-ContextInfo: Reads only file metadata from disk without decryption for fast queries
• Set-Context: No longer updates $script:Contexts memory cache, writes only to disk
• Remove-Context: Scans disk files directly instead of iterating memory cache
• Set-ContextVault: No longer auto-imports contexts into memory on initialization
• Argument completers: Updated to enumerate context IDs from disk for accurate tab completion

[Marius Storhaug (MariusStorhaug)]

Would it make sense to let the completer to use Get-ContextInfo?
Would it make sense to remove the logic that uses and configures $script:Config.Initialized?

[Copilot]

Would it make sense to let the completer to use Get-ContextInfo?
Would it make sense to remove the logic that uses and configures $script:Config.Initialized?

Both suggestions implemented in commit 310c6a8:

1. Completer now uses Get-ContextInfo: Replaced manual file reading with Get-ContextInfo call for better consistency and error handling
2. Removed $script:Config.Initialized logic: Completer no longer checks initialization state since Get-ContextInfo handles it internally

Benefits: DRY principle, simpler code (7 vs 14 lines), consistent behavior across module.

Warning

Firewall rules blocked me from connecting to one or more addresses

I tried to connect to the following addresses, but was blocked by firewall rules:

• www.powershellgallery.com
  • Triggering command: pwsh -Command try { Install-Module Pester -Force -Scope CurrentUser } catch { Write-Host 'Pester install failed' } (dns block)
  • Triggering command: pwsh -Command Get-PSRepository (dns block)

If you need me to access, download, or install something from one of these locations, you can either:

• Configure Actions setup steps to set up my environment, which run before the firewall is enabled
• Add the appropriate URLs or hosts to my firewall allow list

[github-actions]

Module Context - 7.0.5-copilotfix87001 published to the PowerShell Gallery.

[github-actions]

GitHub release for Context v7.0.5-copilotfix87001 has been created.

[github-actions]

Module Context - 7.0.5-copilotfix87002 published to the PowerShell Gallery.

[github-actions]

GitHub release for Context v7.0.5-copilotfix87002 has been created.

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

This patch refactors context handling in the PowerShell module to enable true cross-process context sharing by replacing the in-memory dictionary with disk‐based operations. Key changes include:

• Removing the in-memory context store and updating context operations to read/write directly from disk.
• Updating module dependencies and documentation to reflect the new behavior.
• Removing the Import-Context function and updating argument completers to enumerate contexts from disk.

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 9 out of 9 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
src/variables/private/Contexts.ps1	Removed in-memory concurrent dictionary storage.
src/functions/public/Set-Context.ps1	Refactored context creation/update to scan disk files and update docs.
src/functions/public/Remove-Context.ps1	Revised context removal to operate over files on disk.
src/functions/public/Get-ContextInfo.ps1	Changed retrieval to read only metadata from disk.
src/functions/public/Get-Context.ps1	Adjusted context decryption to work with contexts stored on disk.
src/functions/private/Set-ContextVault.ps1	Updated vault initialization and removed auto-import of contexts.
src/functions/private/Import-Context.ps1	Removed deprecated function for in-memory context import.
src/completers.ps1	Updated argument completer to enumerate contexts via Get-ContextInfo.

[github-actions]

Module Context - 7.0.5 published to the PowerShell Gallery.

[github-actions]

GitHub release for Context v7.0.5 has been created.