Anyone know of any good MSBuild tasks that will execute a PowerShell script and pass it different parameters?
I was able to find B# .NET Blog: Invoking PowerShell scripts from MSBuild, but I'm hoping for something that is a little more polished.
If I can't find anything I will of course just go ahead and polish my own using that blog post as a starter.
One could use http://powershellmsbuild.codeplex.com/ for 3.5. It'd be nice if there was a NuGet package for it that one could leverage via NuGet package restore.
4.0 has a Windows Powershell Task Factory which you can get in the code gallery has been rolled into
MSBuild Extension Pack (one of the top task libraries - 400+ Tasks & recommended in Inside MSBuild) has PowerShellTaskFactory
(download the help file from the download section of this example release to have a peek).
You might also want to look at Psake - a PowerShell based build environment.
Duplicate Question and Answer I Posted, here for posterity for when it has been vote to closed. The key difference is that this question was constrained to being OOTB and my self-answer stays within that constraint.
Question
Powershell doesn't seem to have an easy way to trigger it with an arbitrary command and then bubble up parse and execution errors in a way that correctly interoperates with callers that are not PowerShell - e.g., cmd.exe
, TeamCity etc.
My question is simple. What's the best way for me with OOTB MSBuild v4 and PowerShell v3 (open to suggestions-wouldnt rule out a suitably production ready MSBuild Task, but it would need to be a bit stronger than suggesting "it's easy - taking the PowerShell Task Factory sample and tweak it and/or becoming it's maintainer/parent") to run a command (either a small script segment, or (most commonly) an invocation of a .ps1
script.
I'm thinking it should be something normal like:
<Exec
IgnoreStandardErrorWarningFormat="true"
Command="PowerShell "$(ThingToDo)"" />
That sadly doesn't work:-
- if
ThingToDo
fails to parse, it fails silently
- if
ThingToDo
is a script invocation that doesn't exist, it fails
- if you want to propagate an
ERRORLEVEL
based .cmd
result, it gets hairy
- if you want to embed
"
quotes in the ThingToDo
, it won't work
So, what is the bullet proof way of running PowerShell from MSBuild supposed to be? Is there something I can PsGet to make everything OK?
Answer
Weeeeelll, you could use something long winded like this until you find a better way:-
<PropertyGroup>
<__PsInvokeCommand>powershell "Invoke-Command</__PsInvokeCommand>
<__BlockBegin>-ScriptBlock { $errorActionPreference='Stop';</__BlockBegin>
<__BlockEnd>; exit $LASTEXITCODE }</__BlockEnd>
<_PsCmdStart>$(__PsInvokeCommand) $(__BlockBegin)</_PsCmdStart>
<_PsCmdEnd>$(__BlockEnd)"</_PsCmdEnd>
</PropertyGroup>
And then 'all' you need to do is:
<Exec
IgnoreStandardErrorWarningFormat="true"
Command="$(_PsCmdStart)$(ThingToDo)$(_PsCmdEnd)" />
The single redeeming feature of this (other than trapping all error types I could think of), is that it works OOTB with any PowerShell version and any MSBuild version.
I'll get my coat.
With a bit of fun, I managed to come up with a fairly clean way of making this work:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<!-- #1 Place this line at the top of any msbuild script (ie, csproj, etc) -->
<PropertyGroup><PowerShell># 2>nul || type %~df0|find /v "setlocal"|find /v "errorlevel"|powershell.exe -noninteractive -& exit %errorlevel% || #</PowerShell></PropertyGroup>
<!-- #2 in any target you want to run a script -->
<Target Name="default" >
<PropertyGroup> <!-- #3 prefix your powershell script with the $(PowerShell) variable, then code as normal! -->
<myscript>$(PowerShell)
#
# powershell script can do whatever you need.
#
dir ".\*.cs" -recurse |% {
write-host Examining file named: $_.FullName
# do other stuff here...
}
$answer = 2+5
write-host Answer is $answer !
</myscript>
</PropertyGroup>
<!-- #4 and execute the script like this -->
<Exec Command="$(myscript)" EchoOff="true" />
</Target>
</Project>
Notes:
- You can still use the standard Exec Task features! (see: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/x8zx72cd.aspx)
if your powershell script needs to use < > or & characters, just place the contents in a CDATA wrapper:
<script2><![CDATA[ $(PowerShell)
# your powershell code goes here!
write-host "<<Hi mom!>>"
]]></script2>
if you want return items to the msbuild script you can get them:
<script3>$(PowerShell)
# your powershell code goes here!
(dir "*.cs" -recurse).FullName
</script3>
<Exec Command="$(script3)" EchoOff="true" ConsoleToMSBuild="true">
<Output TaskParameter="ConsoleOutput" PropertyName="items" />
</Exec>
<Touch Files="$(items)" />
See! then you can use those items with another msbuild Task :D