Call powershell script in post-built with parameters

(This thread is not new, but I got here from Google, so I thought sharing the solution I found would be interesting to others)

I tried changing the path to powershell.exe to "%WINDIR%\SysNative\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" and it worked perfect. The 64 bits version is called from the Post Build event and it successfully adds the SharePoint snapin.

Credits to this article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff798298.aspx, "Using Windows PowerShell Scripts to Automate Tasks in Visual Studio".

Because of file system virtualization, you can't really specify the path to the 64-bit version of PowerShell from a 32-bit process (ie Visual Studio - which hosts the msbuild engine). One hack-ish way to work around this is to create a 64-bit launcher that runs as 64-bit and will launch the 64-bit version of PowerShell. Here's a simple C# program that will do this:

using System;using System.Diagnostics;class App{  static int Main(string[] args)  {    Process process = Process.Start("PowerShell.exe", String.Join(" ", args));    process.WaitForExit();    return process.ExitCode;  }}

Be sure to compile this as 64-bit like so:

csc .\PowerShell64.cs /platform:x64

Then, from your post-build event execute this launcher exe passing it the parameters you want to invoke 64-bit PowerShell with. Also, with PowerShell 2.0 I would recommend using the File parameter to execute a script e.g.:

c:\path\PowerShell64.exe -File "$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\CreateSite.ps1" auto

That said, surely there has to be some other way (utility) that launches exes from a 64-bit process.

When you run you script directly, you probably use 32bit PowerShell and in your msbuild script 64bit or vice versa. Also have a look at Error msg: “No snap-ins have been registered for Windows PowerShell version 2.”.