Module Specification Syntax

ModuleFast introduces a shorthand string syntax for defining module specifications. It generally takes the form of <ModuleName><Operator><Version>. The version supports SemVer 2 and prerelease tags.

The available operators are:

• =: Exact version match. Examples: ImportExcel=7.1.0, ImportExcel=7.1.0-preview
• >: Greater than. Example: ImportExcel>7.1.0
• >=: Greater than or equal to. Example: ImportExcel>=7.1.0
• <: Less than. Example: ImportExcel<7.1.0
• <=: Less than or equal to. Example: ImportExcel<=7.1.0
• !: A prerelease operator that can be present at the beginning or end of a module name to indicate that prerelease versions are acceptable. Example: ImportExcel!, !ImportExcel. It can be combined with the other operators like so: ‘ImportExcel!>7.1.0’
• :: Lets you specify a NuGet version range. Example: ImportExcel:(7.0.0, 7.2.1-preview]

For more information about NuGet version range syntax used with the ‘:’ operator: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/nuget/concepts/package-versioning#version-ranges. Wilcards are supported with this syntax e.g. ImportExcel:3.2.* will install the latest 3.2.x version.

ModuleFast also fully supports the ModuleSpecification object and hashtable-like string syntaxes that are used by Install-Module and Install-PSResource. More information on this format: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/microsoft.powershell.commands.modulespecification?view=powershellsdk-7.4.0

NOTE: ModuleFast does not strictly conform to SemVer without the -StrictSemVer parameter. For example, for ergonomics, we exclude 2.0 prereleases from Module<2.0, since most people who do this do not want 2.0 prereleases which might contain breaking changes, even though by semver definition, Module 2.0-alpha1 is less than 2.0