"Join-Path : A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument 'xxx'"

Question

I have a line in a script that works on my dev environments but not in my Appveyor CI environment.

The script:

$rootpath = Join-Path $PSScriptRoot '..' | Resolve-Path

$specs = Join-Path "$rootpath" spec fix *xml | Resolve-Path

My dev environment does exactly what I expect: $specs is assigned an an array of paths to xml files in that dir.

However, my CI fails out with this:

Join-Path : A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument 'fix'.
At C:\projects\myproj-jib50\scripts\Generate-Message-Sources.ps1:8 char:10
+ $specs = Join-Path $rootpath spec fix *xml | Resolve-Path
+          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidArgument: (:) [Join-Path], ParameterBindingException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : PositionalParameterNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.JoinPathCommand
 
No input files.

My dev is powershell 7.3.9, but the CI is 7.3.8. Could that be the difference?

Answer 1

It seems the CI was not using the version of Powershell that I thought it was using.

The CI is Appveyor using a "Visual Studio 2022" image.

The existing config was using a "ps" section (pre-existing before my involvement) to run powershell commands including my script, and when I altered my script to print out the version within it, it kept printing 1.0.0. I tried like 3 different ways, and only 1.0.0 came out. (Could it really be using 1.0.0? That seems insane.)

However, when I ran pwsh --Version outside of that section, I got 7.3.8 (as noted in my question). Following that lead, I deleted the ps section entirely and ran my script with pwsh, and it worked correctly.

So it appears @SantiagoSquarzon was correct in his comment-- my CI was not actually using 7.3.8 as I thought.

Answer 2

I would not spend too much time investigating the ci behavior for this case. Instead I would try to workaround it like this:

$specs = $rootpath + '\spec\fix\*xml' | Resolve-Path