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Get-Help cannot find about topics from Update-Help #18397
Description
Prerequisites
- Write a descriptive title.
- Make sure you are able to repro it on the latest released version
- Search the existing issues.
- Refer to the FAQ.
- Refer to Differences between Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell.
Steps to reproduce
Modules with about topics are unable to be found if the help is delivered via Update-Help.
Update-Help PSReadline
Get-Help about_PSReadlineExpected behavior
Shows about topicActual behavior
Get-Help about_PSReadline
Name Category Module Synopsis
---- -------- ------ --------
Add-History Cmdlet Microsoft.PowerShell.Core Appends entries to the session history.
Clear-History Cmdlet Microsoft.PowerShell.Core Deletes entries from the PowerShell session comm…
Get-History Cmdlet Microsoft.PowerShell.Core Gets a list of the commands entered during the c…
Invoke-History Cmdlet Microsoft.PowerShell.Core Runs commands from the session history.
about_Functions_Argument_Complet… HelpFile
about_History HelpFile
about_Line_Editing HelpFile
about_Pipelines HelpFile
about_Tab_Expansion HelpFileError details
N/AEnvironment data
$PSVersionTable
Name Value
---- -----
PSVersion 7.3.0-rc.1
PSEdition Core
GitCommitId 7.3.0-rc.1
OS Microsoft Windows 10.0.19044
Platform Win32NT
PSCompatibleVersions {1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0…}
PSRemotingProtocolVersion 2.3
SerializationVersion 1.1.0.1
WSManStackVersion 3.0Visuals
No response
Reacted by Olav Rønnestad Birkeland
Activity
StevenBucher98 commentedon Oct 31, 2022
This repros in 7.2.6 too, Sean Wheeler (@sdwheeler) and Dongbo Wang (@daxian-dbw) is there something with the
about_PSReadLinepage that is mis-linked? or is this have to do withGet-Help?sdwheeler commentedon Oct 31, 2022
This is a bug in
Get-Help. On my system I get the following output:The help system is seeing two files. I believe that one is from Windows PowerShell 5.1 and the other is the current version of help installed for PowerShell 7.x.
sdwheeler commentedon Oct 31, 2022
There are actually 2 different issues here: Thomas's issue and mine.
I think Thomas's issue is the classic known issue for PSReadLine caused by the change in the spelling (capital L). Also you must use
Update-Help -Forceto ensure that it downloads any files. See https://devblogs.microsoft.com/powershell/updating-help-for-the-psreadline-module-in-windows-powershell-5-1/ for instructions to fix.My issue is that I had two about_PSReadLine files installed on my system and
Get-Helponly displays the summary view when there is more than one help topic available. This is expected behavior forGet-Help. The question is how did I get two copies of that file? Deleting the old (lowercase) file fixed my problem.ThomasNieto commentedon Oct 31, 2022
Sean Wheeler (@sdwheeler) In my testing this issue isn't limited to PSReadLine, its just the one I chose for the example.
Here is another example from my module:
It doesn't return anything however if you copy the en-US folder to the module directory it can find it. It looks Get-Help doesn't search the
Help\<module>\<version>\<culture>directory for about topics, it does work for the maml help though.sdwheeler commentedon Oct 31, 2022
Thomas Nieto (@ThomasNieto) I can't reproduce your issue. Can you provide exact steps with real module names. Be sure to run
Update-Help <module> -Force.ThomasNieto commentedon Oct 31, 2022
Sean Wheeler (@sdwheeler) that is the module name, you can run those commands verbatim to reproduce the issue.
sdwheeler commentedon Oct 31, 2022
Thomas Nieto (@ThomasNieto) OK, I can reproduce this problem.
Aditya Patwardhan (@adityapatwardhan) This is the problem we discussed where help is not found for a module installed in the user scope unless you manually copy the help to the module folder.