Why are my PowerShell exit codes always “0”?

Question

I\'ve got a PowerShell script as follows

##teamcity[progressMessage \'Beginning build\']
# If the build computer is not running the appropriate version of .N         


        

Answer 1

None of these options worked for me in my PowerShell script for whatever reason. I spent hours on it.

For me the best option was to put a layer between TeamCity and PowerShell. So I simply wrote a C# console application which calls the PowerShell script.

The way I do it is, in TeamCity we call a script named: RemoteFile.ps1

With script arguments: %system.RemoteServerFQDN% %system.RemoteUser% %system.RemoteUserPassword% %system.RemoteScriptName% %system.RemotePropertiesFile% %system.BuildVersion% %system.RunList%

param (
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
    $Computername,
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
    $Username,
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
    $Password,
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
    $ScriptName,
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
    $Propfile,
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
    $Version,
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
    [string[]]$DeploymentTypes
)

$securePassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force $Password
$cred = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential $Username, $securePassword
Write-Host "Readying to execute invoke-command..."
Invoke-Command -ComputerName $Computername -Credential $cred -ScriptBlock {       D:\Deployment\PowershellWrapper.exe $using:ScriptName $using:Propfile $using:Version      $using:DeploymentTypes } -ArgumentList $ScriptName,$Propfile,$Version,$DeploymentTypes

Which exists on the remote server in the specified location.

Then that file calls this: powershellwrapper.exe also in the specified location (my script has four parameters to pass to the PowerShell script)

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Diagnostics;

namespace PowershellWrapper
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            try
            {
                string argFull = @"""{0} {1} {2} {3}""";
                string arg0 = args[0];
                string arg1 = args[1];
                string arg2 = args[2];
                string arg3 = args[3];
                string argFinal = string.Format(argFull, arg0, arg1, arg2, arg3);

                ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
                startInfo.FileName = @"powershell.exe";
                startInfo.Arguments = argFinal;
                startInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = false;
                startInfo.RedirectStandardError = false;
                startInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
                startInfo.RedirectStandardInput = true;
                startInfo.CreateNoWindow = false;
                Process process = new Process();
                process.StartInfo = startInfo;
                process.Start();
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("{0} Exception caught.", e);
                Console.WriteLine("An error occurred in the deployment.", e);
                Console.WriteLine("Please contact test@test.com if error occurs.");
            }
        }
    }
}

And that calls my script with four parameters. The script being the first parameter, plus three arguments. So essentially what is going on here is that I'm executing the PowershellWrapper.exe instead of the PowerShell script itself to capture the erroneous exit code 0's, and it still reports the full script running back to the TeamCity log.

I hope that makes sense. It works like a charm for us.

Answer 2

I was having this exact issue while running with the -file, but for some reason the trap syntax or the 'exit' syntax provided by Kevin wasn't working in my scenario.

I am not sure why, but just in case somebody else hits the same problem, I used the below syntax and it worked for me:

try{
    #DO SOMETHING HERE
}
catch
{
    Write-Error $_
    ##teamcity[buildStatus status='FAILURE']
    [System.Environment]::Exit(1)
}

Answer 3

Using -ErrorAction stop on a command returns an Exit code 1 by default and is showing it also in TeamCity without adding a Failure Condition. We will now implement this behaviour by default for every PowerShell command using $ErrorActionPreference = "Stop";.

Answer 4

Until this (presumably) gets closed as dup of my self-answer of an older question, I'll summarise the cleanest solution here:

• Most of the other answers involve emitting something to the stderr from the PowerShell bit. This can be accomplished directly with TeamCity via the Format stderr output as option (set it to Error instead of the default, which is Warning)

• However, critically, it's also necessary to switch on the "Fail build if: ... An error message is logged by (sic) build runner" under "Failure Conditions" (if any of the other answers work for you, you'll likely have this switched on already but IME it's very easy to forget!)

Answer 5

This is a known issue with PowerShell. Executing a script with -file returns an exit code of 0 when it shouldn't.

(Update: The links below no longer work. Please look for, or report, this problem on PowerShell: Hot (1454 ideas) – Windows Server)

• https://connect.microsoft.com/PowerShell/feedback/details/777375/powershell-exe-does-not-set-an-exit-code-when-file-is-used

• https://connect.microsoft.com/PowerShell/feedback/details/750653/powershell-exe-doesn-t-return-correct-exit-codes-when-using-the-file-option

Since using -command wasn't working for you, you could try adding a trap at the top of the script:

trap
{
    write-output $_
    ##teamcity[buildStatus status='FAILURE' ]
    exit 1
}

The above should result in a proper exit code when an exception is thrown.