How to import the alias "ral" of Remove-Alias? #25887

Good find - this is exactly the situation with cmdlet-declared aliases plus manifest export lists.

The [Alias("ral")] attribute on RemoveAliasCommand only registers the alias in the cmdlet metadata. Whether it ends up in your session depends on the manifest: Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility.psd1 restricts AliasesToExport, and since ral is not listed, the alias is never exported when the nested module is imported. So it is effectively available to internal use of the module (and to anything that loads the raw binary module without the manifest), but not to your session.

You can confirm with:

Get-Module Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility).ExportedAliases

ral won't be there, while other exported aliases will.

Since Import-Module -Alias can only select from aliases the module actually exports (as you noted), the intended way to get ral in your session is to create it yourself - the cmdlet exists, so it just works:

Set-Alias ral Remove-Alias

Put that in your PROFILE to have it everywhere:

Add-Content $PROFILE "Set-Alias ral Remove-Alias"

If you would rather fix it at the source (e.g. you maintain a fork), adding ral to the AliasesToExport list in Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility.psd1 would export it normally - worth suggesting to the team if you think it should ship that way.