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

You need slightly different error handling for powershell functions and for calling exe's, and you need to be sure to tell the caller of your script that it has failed. Building on top of Exec from the library Psake, a script that has the structure below will stop on all errors, and is usable as a base template for most scripts.

Set-StrictMode -Version latest
$ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"


# Taken from psake https://github.com/psake/psake
<#
.SYNOPSIS
  This is a helper function that runs a scriptblock and checks the PS variable $lastexitcode
  to see if an error occcured. If an error is detected then an exception is thrown.
  This function allows you to run command-line programs without having to
  explicitly check the $lastexitcode variable.
.EXAMPLE
  exec { svn info $repository_trunk } "Error executing SVN. Please verify SVN command-line client is installed"
#>
function Exec
{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param(
        [Parameter(Position=0,Mandatory=1)][scriptblock]$cmd,
        [Parameter(Position=1,Mandatory=0)][string]$errorMessage = ("Error executing command {0}" -f $cmd)
    )
    & $cmd
    if ($lastexitcode -ne 0) {
        throw ("Exec: " + $errorMessage)
    }
}

Try {

    # Put all your stuff inside here!

    # powershell functions called as normal and try..catch reports errors 
    New-Object System.Net.WebClient

    # call exe's and check their exit code using Exec
    Exec { setup.exe }

} Catch {
    # tell the caller it has all gone wrong
    $host.SetShouldExit(-1)
    throw
}