How to stop a PowerShell script on the first error?

Question

I want my PowerShell script to stop when any of the commands I run fail (like set -e in bash). I\'m using both Powershell commands (New-Object System.Net.

Answer 1

Sadly, due to buggy cmdlets like New-RegKey and Clear-Disk, none of these answers are enough. I've currently settled on the following code in a file called ps_support.ps1:

Set-StrictMode -Version Latest
$ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"
$PSDefaultParameterValues['*:ErrorAction']='Stop'
function ThrowOnNativeFailure {
    if (-not $?)
    {
        throw 'Native Failure'
    }
}

Then in any powershell file, after the CmdletBinding and Param for the file (if present), I have the following:

$ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"
. "$PSScriptRoot\ps_support.ps1"

The duplicated ErrorActionPreference = "Stop" line is intentional. If I've goofed and somehow gotten the path to ps_support.ps1 wrong, that needs to not silently fail!

I keep ps_support.ps1 in a common location for my repo/workspace, so the path to it for the dot-sourcing may change depending on where the current .ps1 file is.

Any native call gets this treatment:

native_call.exe
ThrowOnNativeFailure

Having that file to dot-source has helped me maintain my sanity while writing powershell scripts. :-)