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The changes looks good. Can you add tests for this under: https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/blob/master/test/powershell/engine/HelpSystem.Tests.ps1

In the test you could use Select-Xml to get the provider specific help for Get-Item like:

$Namespace = @{command = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/maml/dev/command/2004/10"; maml = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/maml/2004/10"; dev = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/maml/dev/2004/10"; msh = "http://msh"}

$Path = "$PSHome\en-US\System.Management.Automation.dll-help.xml"

$xPath = "/msh:helpItems/msh:providerHelp/msh:CmdletHelpPaths/msh:CmdletHelpPath[@id='FileSystem']/command:command[command:details/command:verb='Get' and command:details/command:noun='Item']"

$op = Select-Xml -Path 'C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\en-US\System.Management.Automation.dll-help.xml' -XPath $xPath  -Namespace $Namespace | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Node

$op.description.para 

$op.description.para should match the description returned from the

(get-help get-item).description

Tests failed, get details here: https://ci.appveyor.com/project/PowerShell/powershell/build/6.0.0-alpha.9-329/tests

I've added some basic tests, ran CI build multiple times and results are not good:

When invoked at AppVeyor, Get-Help -Name "$verb-$noun" -Path $path cmdlet returns "bare" help, i.e. only command syntax, - no description, no synopsis, no other details. It even fails to locate the default help. I was unable to find the root cause of this.

This happens at AppVeyor:

Get-Help -Name "New-Item" -Path 'Cert:\' | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Synopsis

# output
New-Item [-Path] <string[]> [-ItemType <string>] [-Value <Object>] [-Force] [-Credential <pscredential>] [-WhatIf] [-Confirm] [<CommonParameters>]

New-Item [[-Path] <string[]>] -Name <string> [-ItemType <string>] [-Value <Object>] [-Force] [-Credential <pscredential>] [-WhatIf] [-Confirm] [<CommonParameters>]

This output, obviously, will not match the text from help.xml.

When run locally, using fresh & clean build, same cmdlet is able to load text from help.xml file:

Get-Help -Name "New-Item" -Path 'Cert:\' | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Synopsis

# output
Creates new certificate stores in the LocalMachine store location.

As for Linux (Travis CI), these tests would fail, because:

1. Fresh build output does not contain help.xml files, Pester test must run Update-Help to retrieve them; but Update-Help is not yet supported on Linux (It is using Windows Cabinet API internally). Without Update-Help, there will be no help.xml files to load provider-specific help from.
2. Cert:\ and WSMan:\ providers are not yet supported on non-Windows platforms (Correct me if I'm wrong).

I've disabled these tests when build is not running on Windows.

Looks like I am stuck here.

@adityapatwardhan @TravisEz13 Any ideas?

@0xfeeddeadbeef , to build the same way and run the same tests which are failing, please run the following on windows from the root of the PowerShell repo:

Import-Module .\tools\appveyor.psm1
Invoke-AppVeyorFull

You may need to rebase the latest changes as this command was only added recently.
Warning: this will rerun start-psbootstrap

@TravisEz13 Thank you. That's really useful tip. I was able to attach a debugger and I think I'm onto something: when running with generated native images, ProviderBase.ProviderInfo.HelpFile property returns something like this: OriginalAssemblyName.ni.dll-Help.xml - notice the ni in the name. Looks like this bug is burrowed even deeper. I'll try to figure it out...

@0xfeeddeadbeef No Problem, it's a very recent change. I haven't even documented it yet.

@0xfeeddeadbeef It seems all the tests are passing. Are more changes expected for this issue?

@adityapatwardhan That's all. No more changes.

Looks good to me.