PowerShell core sdk version isn't at 2.1.4, but only 2.0.2. I would rather not get in front of PowerShell core - https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/blob/master/global.json, what do you think?

I was originally asking the same question in the PowerShell core repo here and it seems that starting with netcore2, the sdk and runtime are decoupled now so that one can use an older sdk but a newer runtime. I could try doing it like they do in the PowerShell Core repo by specifying the runtime in the csproj files but at the moment, the SDK was chosen to match the 2.0.5. runtime that it contains.
Maybe the best solution is to use the latest SDK but hardcode the runtime target in the csproj. WDYT?

I'm still not clear on the CI system for PSSA, does it actually do a run against Core as well as full? Can the test automation help up here?

I'm still not clear on the CI system for PSSA, does it actually do a run against Core as well as full? Can the test automation help us here? The worst thing would be to cause a break with core, i expect that full is not going to be an issue at all.

Me neither but as far as I understand PSSA gets first built using net451 only.
It seems that the core version is built by targeting netstandard1.6, which should eliminate at least the runtime versioning problem. I'll add a test to make sure it builds at least fine against netstandard1.6 in CI. I suppose running the tests using the core/netstandard version and/or against pwsh are future improvements to it.
As a test I tried building using netstandard1.6 before running the tests in PR #856 but that did not go well. Maybe some of the test scripts have to be adapted for that as well but I don't really have the time/motivation for doing that tbh.

ok -thanks-

The only reason we decoupled the SDK and Runtime versions in PowerShell Core repo is that the new CLI versions violated PowerShell Core build process several times. I hope it doesn't matter here.