Best practice to run PowerShell scripts from Jenkins

Step-by-step

1. Choose “Execute Windows batch command”.

2. Paste this to print out command-lines itself to the console:

@echo off
type %0
echo.

1. Surround your PowerShell script like this:

powershell -noprofile -command "$ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop'; Set-PsDebug -Strict; .\Do-YourJob.ps1"

1. If your script contains external commands (like .exes or .cmds), test each exit code of them by $LASTEXITCODE:

bcp.exe blah blah
if ($LASTEXITCODE -ne 0) throw "bcp exit with $LASTEXITCODE"

Explanations

$ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop' makes powershell.exe exit with non-zero when an exception is thrown in the script (maybe).

Set-PsDebug -Strict causes an exception when a variable is used before its assignment, otherwise an uninitialized variable results $null.

Usually powershell.exe returns zero exit code (means success in Jenkins) even if the last command exit with non-zero (means failure).

The PowerShell plugin allows you to write PowerShell codes directly but I thought it would be hard to catch some kind of errors. Probably due to its invocation i.e.:

powershell.exe "& 'C:\Windows\TEMP\hudson########.ps1'"