AzLocal.UpdateManagement v0.8.77: fix two production strict-mode crashes (Step.05/06/07)

[NeilBird]

Summary

Patch release. Fixes two production strict-mode crashes that surfaced in Step.05 / Step.06 / Step.07 of the bundled apply-updates pipelines. Both bugs share the same root cause: bare $obj.Prop property access under Set-StrictMode -Version Latest throws when Prop is absent on a PSCustomObject instead of returning $null.

Resolves no open issue (regressions found by live customer production traces, not filed).

What changed

Bug 1 - Start-AzLocalClusterUpdate (Step.07 main entry)

Production emitted Error processing cluster '<Name>': The property 'UpdateStartWindow' cannot be found on this object. for clusters whose tag bag did not include UpdateStartWindow / UpdateExclusionsWindow. The old if ($clusterTags -and $clusterTags.$($script:UpdateStartWindowTagName)) threw before -and short-circuited because bare .$() member access on a missing PSCustomObject property is strict-mode-fatal.

Fix: branch on $clusterTags -is [System.Collections.IDictionary] and use .Contains() for hashtables / PSObject.Properties[...] for PSCustomObject tag bags. The semantic intent ("absent = any time eligible / no window restriction") is preserved: the outer if ($windowTagValue -or $exclusionTagValue) correctly skips the schedule gate when both are $null.

Bug 2 - Test-AzLocalClusterHealth (Step.05/06 readiness gate)

Production emitted Checking: <Cluster>... Error: The property 'healthCheckResult' cannot be found on this object. for clusters whose ARM update summary genuinely had no healthCheckResult field (typical for clusters not yet probed). The catch block then flagged the cluster HealthState=Error / Passed=$false, and the readiness gate falsely treated it as blocked, poisoning Step.5 / Step.7 / Step.9 readiness output. The same bare-access pattern was present in Get-HealthCheckFailureSummary (Private helper) and Get-AzLocalFleetStatusData (Public, -IncludeHealthDetails).

Fix: all three sites now use the PSObject.Properties[...] guard; Test-AzLocalClusterHealth correctly classifies such clusters as HealthState="No Data" / Passed=$true and continues.

Tests

Two new Pester regression contexts feed the minimal real-world property-less shapes and assert Should -Not -Throw plus the correct downstream classification. Both bugs were invisible to parse-time analysis - only runtime against the property-less shape triggers the strict-mode throw.

Total: 1143  Passed: 1142  Failed: 0  Skipped: 1  Duration: 00:01:47

Pipeline templates

GENERATED_AGAINST_MODULE_VERSION bumped from '0.8.76' to '0.8.77' across all 22 bundled pipeline templates (11 github-actions + 11 azure-devops).

API surface

No public API change or new exports (still 60).

See CHANGELOG.md for the full v0.8.77 entry.