Write-Host and Write-Ouput in remoting - powershell

Question

Say that I have this simple function:
Function DoSomething
{
Write-Host "Doing something locally..."
Start-Sleep 5
Return 5
}
Now, say that I want to be able to execute this function on the local machine but also on another one using Powershell remoting. The issue is that Write-Host is not suited for this. Indeed, in the case where the script is executed remotely, I don't want the sentence to be displayed on the console, but I'd like to received information about the progress of the task, so I did this:
Function DoSomething
{
if ([Environment]::UserInteractive -eq $true)
{
Write-Host "Doing something locally..."
}
else
{
Write-Output "Doing something remotely..."
}
Start-Sleep 5
Return 5
}
With that, I can pipe the function like this:
Function Pipable {
Param(
[Parameter(Mandatory = $true, ValueFromPipeline = $true, ValueFromPipelinebyPropertyName = $true)]
$value
)
Process {
Write-Host $value
}
}
Invoke-Command -ComputerName "MACHINE" -ScriptBlock {
Function DoSomething
{ ... }
DoSomething
} | Pipable
My problem is that if I replace the call to DoSomething by something like:
$value = DoSomething
Then the sentence "Doing something remotely..." is not send through the pipe for reasons I understand but it blocks me in what I want to do:
I'd like to be able to display some information on the console if the function is executed locally but when it's executed remotely, I'd like to get information about the status that I would handle my own way on the computer that start the PSSession. Write-Output seemed useful for this, but I can't use it in a function that return a value for the reason explained above.
Is there a way to do so?

Answer 1

You can still use Write-Host. On remote you could do:
DoSomething *> $Env:TEMP\DoSomething
if ((gc $Env:TEMP\DoSomething) -match 'handle stuff') ...
$out = DoSomething 6> $Env:TEMP\DoSomething
if ((gc $Env:TEMP\DoSomething) -match 'handle stuff') ...