How can I display a 'naked' error message in PowerShell without an accompanying stacktrace?

Question

How can I write to standard error from PowerShell, or trap errors such that:

• An error message is displayed as an error (truly writing to standard error so that Tea

Answer 1

Building on the idea in a previous answer, you can override the built-in Write-Error cmdlet temporarily with a custom function.

# Override the built-in cmdlet with a custom version
function Write-Error($message) {
    [Console]::ForegroundColor = 'red'
    [Console]::Error.WriteLine($message)
    [Console]::ResetColor()
}

# Pretty-print "Something is wrong" on stderr (in red).
Write-Error "Something is wrong"

# Setting things back to normal 
Remove-Item function:Write-Error

# Print the standard bloated Powershell errors
Write-Error "Back to normal errors"

With this you are utilizing the fact that Powershell Functions takes precedence over cmdlets.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh848304.aspx

This is the most elegant approach I've been able to come up with to both show beautiful and concise error messages, as well as letting TeamCity detect problems easily.