Any good PowerShell MSBuild tasks?

Question

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.

Answer 1

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 -&amp; 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

Answer 2

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 &quot;$(ThingToDo)&quot;" />

---

That sadly doesn't work:-

1. if ThingToDo fails to parse, it fails silently
2. if ThingToDo is a script invocation that doesn't exist, it fails
3. if you want to propagate an ERRORLEVEL based .cmd result, it gets hairy
4. 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.

Answer 3

You might also want to look at Psake - a PowerShell based build environment.

Answer 4

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).