Using PowerShell in post/pre build action in Visual Studio
Let’s say it. Batch files are plain simple for any real developer to use. PowerShell rocks. Sadly in Visual Studio in fairly useful feature of post/pre build actions you can by default use only batch files. Normally for full builds I use psake or I just script it on build server as next step, but today I needed it directly in Visual Studio. Time to start playing.
To make editing easier I decided to create file post-build.ps1 (I needed just post build action). This way I don’t need to go to Properties window just to change something in script. I then set this file to be copied to output directory.
The invocation is not difficult. Visual Studio executes the commands with output directory as working directory so I know where the relative paths start from. Then I just added simple command to post build action to execute the script.
powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -NoProfile -NonInteractive -File post-build.ps1
I’m setting ExecutionPolicy to Bypass in case somebody would not have it set to Unrestricted. 😉 I’m using NoProfile as I often use plain PowerShell and loading my profile would just slow it a bit. Of course NonInteractive because, well, there is no interaction possible. And finally the File with my script file. Because I set it to be copied to output directory and the commands are executed with output directory as working directory I can just use the name without any juggling with paths.
There’s one final piece I needed to do. Exit codes. If (or when 😉) the script fails it should return non zero exit code so the Visual Studio know something happened. I just put everything into try-catch block, but surely there’s multiple options (like PowerShell’s trap).
try {
# code
}
catch {
exit 1
}
And that’s it. Smooth.
