Clarify the limitations of type fidelity of data passed to remote commands / background jobs

[mklement0]

The type fidelity of $using: values - as well as -ArgumentList arguments - is subject to limitations of the remoting serialization / deserialization infrastructure.

That is, a $using: value will only be of the same type in the target remote / background context if it is a primitive .NET type or is an instance of a handful of well-known types, as specified in the MS-PSRP (PowerShell remoting) protocol.

All other values will be method-less [pscustomobject] emulations of the original objects.

This is currently only explained in the context of receiving objects (output) via the remoting infrastructure, in the about_Remote_Output topic (section "DESERIALIZED OBJECTS") - this topic should be linked to, and vice versa - see #5075

The only exceptions are thread jobs (Start-ThreadJob and ForEach-Object -Parallel), which run in-process, where type fidelity is preserved.

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Document Details

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• ID: d918461b-f625-8e6d-f43d-3197075f1c06
• Version Independent ID: 7fe490eb-b9aa-66bf-0e58-4c8400321a9c
• Content: about_Remote_Variables - PowerShell
• Content Source: reference/7/Microsoft.PowerShell.Core/About/about_Remote_Variables.md
• Product: powershell
• Technology: powershell-cmdlets
• GitHub Login: @SteveL-MSFT
• Microsoft Alias: slee

[sdwheeler]

This is addressed in #5596