Migrating prerelease scripts toward 1.0

The 0.0.15-beta prerelease is published from exact source commit 345f06c861b6d4074e5896e0b27a19f869dfa7e3, but it is not a production-ready 1.0 release. Publication and fresh-install verification do not satisfy Windows, IIS, Exchange, profile, or final 1.0 acceptance.

Command inventory

Use Get-TheCleaners instead of Start-Cleaning. The old name remains a deprecated alias through 1.x. Use Get-TheCleaners -NoLogo for pipelines. Output is now typed command metadata with Name, Maturity, RemovalEnabled, and SupportsWhatIf, rather than a presentation-only property. No command is labeled stable yet; IIS and Exchange are reported as PreviewOnly with removal disabled.

The private logo helper is Show-TheCleanersLogo; private functions are not a supported public API. Import no longer prints a welcome message or creates Invoke-TheCleaners in the caller's environment.

Temporary directories

Clear-CurrentUserTemp no longer removes empty directories by default. Both temp commands now support -RemoveEmptyDirectory. It only prunes directories emptied by the current cleanup and their now-empty ancestors; unrelated pre-existing empty branches remain.

The obsolete -TimeOut parameter is removed. A bounded deepest-first pass replaces the repeated directory-removal loop. Update scripts that supplied -TimeOut; do not silently assume the old parameter still applies.

Clear-CurrentUserTemp -Days 30 -RemoveEmptyDirectory -WhatIf -PassThru
Clear-WindowsTemp -Days 30 -RemoveEmptyDirectory -WhatIf -PassThru

The retention boundary remains inclusive but is now evaluated using UTC last-write times and a single cutoff. Candidate deletion uses a same-handle native DELETE operation without FILE_READ_DATA instead of provider Remove-Item; a missing candidate is skipped, and a directory or different identity substituted at the same path is preserved. Locked/access-denied removals produce stable error IDs on the error stream; review automation that relies on error-stream behavior. -ErrorAction Stop is honored. -PassThru returns the shared result contract, with preview counts distinct from successful removals.

Temp roots and literal paths must be fully qualified Windows filesystem paths. Drive-relative, root-relative, provider-qualified, and device paths are rejected before resolution. Supported extended-length drive and UNC forms are accepted when the Windows provider and long-path policy can resolve them; otherwise discovery fails closed.

IIS

Existing destructive IIS invocations now stop with a terminating IISCleanupPreviewOnly error. Use explicit preview mode while the IIS-specific path and file-format contract is completed:

Clear-OldIISLog -Days 60 -WhatIf -PassThru

Clean-IISLog has the same guard. No removal flag exists, and IIS no longer invokes a generic deletion helper. The old private wrapper has been retired; the format-specific candidate filter remains experimental and must not be piped into a separate deletion command.

Exchange

Existing destructive Exchange invocations now stop with a terminating ExchangeCleanupPreviewOnly error. Rerun only as an explicit preview:

Clear-OldExchangeLog -Days 60 -WhatIf -PassThru

No removal or persistent activation is available. Clean-ExchangeLog has the same guard. Exchange no longer invokes IIS cleanup. Preview candidates are experimental and must not be piped into deletion as a substitute for the missing validated cleanup implementation.

Documentation

The canonical URL is day3bits.com/TheCleaners, matching the title-case GitHub Pages path. The old Start-Cleaning documentation page is retained as a compatibility pointer. Zensical PR #41 merged as af330858b41335366476f0b845e3f73a3c1497d1, closing issue #26; its 36-file canonical deployment and required navigation were independently verified. The separately owned account-root site provides lowercase compatibility through JavaScript from its 404 page, not an HTTP redirect. Later source changes and deployments require their own source-bound evidence.