When PowerShell 4.0 shipped, the major new feature was DSC or Desired State Configuration – a very convenient and declarative way to manage the configuration of your Windows servers.  However as a developer whose IT department doesn’t really allow me anywhere near their servers, I’m interested in DSC from a purely Windows client SKU perspective.  I stand up new test machines and VMs all the time with various Windows client SKUs.  I was disappointed to find that the initial set of DSC resources for Windows clients was missing the equivalent of the WindowsFeature resource that is supported for Windows Server SKU configuration.  Without this resource, you can’t use DSC to configure your machine with features such as IIS, IIS-ASPNET45, etc. 

Well that all changes with the DSC Resource Kit Wave 5.  This version has an updated xPSDesiredStateConfiguration resource that includes xWindowsOptionalFeature.  Add to that the xOneGet resource for installing utilities…