A snap-in was the precursor to a module. It was the mechanism available to extend the set of commands in PowerShell 1.0. The Cmdlet
implementation inside a snap-in is similar to a binary module (written in a language such as C#). A snap-in contains a specialized class that holds the fields where were moved into the module manifest with PowerShell 2.0.
Snap-ins must be installed or registered before they can be used. This can be done using installutil
, which is part of the .NET framework package. Many vendors (including Microsoft) took to releasing Microsoft Installer (MSI) packages to simplify the snap-in installation.
Modules have, for the most part, made snap-ins obsolete. Manifest modules accompanied by a binary module offer the same performance benefits without the installation or registration overhead.
The list of snap-ins may be viewed using the following command:
Get-PSSnapIn -Registered
If the Registered
parameter is excluded, Get-PSSnapIn
will show the snap-ins that...