Get the preview

Maester ships on two channels:

• Stable releases come out every few weeks. Most people, and most pipelines, should run stable.
• A preview is published to the PowerShell Gallery every time a change is merged. It has every new check, command and option as soon as it is merged, before the next stable release.

These docs describe the preview. A check, command or parameter that the stable release doesn’t have yet is marked Preview on its page and in the test catalog. Pick the version you run from the version menu at the top of the page, and the marks say what your version doesn’t have.

Install the preview

Install-Module Maester -AllowPrerelease -Force -Scope CurrentUser

Check which version PowerShell loads:

Get-Module Maester -ListAvailable | Select-Object Name, Version, PrivateData
Import-Module Maester -Force
Get-Module Maester

A preview version ends in -preview followed by a number, for example 3.1.0-preview04.

If you use PSResourceGet instead of PowerShellGet:

Install-PSResource Maester -Prerelease -Reinstall

Use the preview in automation

GitHub Actions. Set maester_version to preview in the Maester action:

- uses: maester365/maester-action@main
  with:
    tenant_id: ${{ secrets.AZURE_TENANT_ID }}
    client_id: ${{ secrets.AZURE_CLIENT_ID }}
    maester_major_version: "3"
    maester_version: preview

Azure DevOps, Azure Automation and other pipelines. Install the module with -AllowPrerelease:

Install-Module Maester -AllowPrerelease -Force -Scope CurrentUser

The preview changes with every merge. For a pipeline other people rely on, run the preview in a second, non-blocking job next to your stable job, or pin an exact preview version with -RequiredVersion 3.1.0-preview04 -AllowPrerelease.

Go back to the stable release

Uninstall-Module Maester -AllVersions -AllowPrerelease -Force
Install-Module Maester -Force -Scope CurrentUser

In GitHub Actions, set maester_version back to latest.

Preview releases and preview checks

Two different things are called preview:

• The preview release is the module version described on this page. Install it with -AllowPrerelease.
• A preview check is a check that is still being tested or depends on a preview Microsoft API. It ships in any release, stable or preview, but only runs when you add -IncludePreview to Invoke-Maester. Its page says so.

Tell us what you find

The preview is how new checks get tested on real tenants before they reach everyone. If something fails or reads wrong, open an issue on GitHub or ask in Discord.