.NET build process: Postbuild bash script "exited with code 1"

Question

I am trying to build a .NET project in Jetbrains Rider on OSX. The project is usually run on Windows machines, but I am trying to get it to build on my OSX machine. As a part of getting this to run, I needed to convert a .bat-file to a .sh-file which I've done and it works when running in command line.

The bash script:

 #!/usr/bin/env bash

ALMADIR="$PWD/Alma/Web/Views/SharedViews"
CROSSWORDDIR="$PWD/Crossword/Web/Views/SharedViews"
ARCHIVEDIR="$PWD/Archive/Web/Views/SharedViews"
ADMINDIR="$PWD/Admin/Web/Views/SharedViews"

if [ -L "$ALMADIR" ]; then
    rm "$ALMADIR"
fi
ln -s "$PWD/Common/Web.Shared/Views" "$ALMADIR"

if [ -L "$CROSSWORDDIR" ]; then
    rm "$CROSSWORDDIR"
fi
ln -s "$PWD/Common/Web.Shared/Views" "$CROSSWORDDIR"

if [ -L "$ARCHIVEDIR" ]; then
    rm "$ARCHIVEDIR"
fi
ln -s "$PWD/Common/Web.Shared/Views" "$ARCHIVEDIR"

if [ -L "$ADMINDIR" ]; then
    rm "$ADMINDIR"
fi
ln -s "$PWD/Common/Web.Shared/Views" "$ADMINDIR"

I know this can be improved in several ways, but I'm trying to keep it simple and not overcomplicate things.

I have also added a condition to the .csproj file so it will run the correct file depending on what platform is being used:

<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(OS)' == 'Unix'">
  <PreBuildEvent>$(ProjectDir)\..\..\RunPrerequisites.sh</PreBuildEvent>
</PropertyGroup>
<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(OS)' == 'Windows'">
  <PreBuildEvent>$(ProjectDir)\..\..\RunPrerequisites.bat</PreBuildEvent>
</PropertyGroup>

This is also working fine, but the script execution itself fails with the following error:

Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets(1291, 5): [MSB3073] The command "MY_PATH_OBSCURED/Folder/Web/../../RunPrerequisites.sh" exited with code 1.

Any ideas what might be going wrong? Do I need to return something from the .sh-script to get everything to understand that it's done or something? The .bat-file is working fine as it always has.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I got this to work and will post the solution here if someone else happens to run in to the same issue.

My problem was partly environment related, partly limited shell-script-knowledge related. When running the .sh-script in Terminal on OSX and getting the current working dir with $PWD, it works just fine. However, when running the shell-script from msbuild, in this case from the Rider build button, the process is running from another folder (usually /binsomewhere in your solution). This makes the path invalid and the script fails.

To get to this answer, I ran msbuild from the Terminal to get a better error logging output. That gave me this error log instead of the limited one inside Rider:

Microsoft (R) Build Engine version 15.3.0.0 (d15.3/17f02c2 Thu Jul 20 17:04:26 EDT 2017) for Mono
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Build started 2017-09-12 16:42:40.
Project "MY_PATH_OBSCURED/Folder/Web/ProjectName.csproj" on node 1 (default targets).
PreBuildEvent:
  MY_PATH_OBSCURED/Folder/Web/../../RunPrerequisites.sh
  ln: MY_PATH_OBSCURED/Folder/Web/bin/../../Alma/Web/Views/SharedViews: No such file or directory
  ln: MY_PATH_OBSCURED/Folder/Web/bin/../../Crossword/Web/Views/SharedViews: No such file or directory
  ln: MY_PATH_OBSCURED/Folder/Web/bin/../../Archive/Web/Views/SharedViews: No such file or directory
  ln: MY_PATH_OBSCURED/Folder/Web/bin/../../Admin/Web/Views/SharedViews: No such file or directory
/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/5.2.0/lib/mono/msbuild/15.0/bin/Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets(1291,5): error MSB3073: The command "MY_PATH_OBSCURED/Folder/Web/../../RunPrerequisites.sh" exited with code 1. [MY_PATH_OBSCURED/Folder/Web/ProjectName.csproj]
Done Building Project "MY_PATH_OBSCURED/Folder/Web/ProjectName.csproj" (default targets) -- FAILED.

Build FAILED.

The solution in this case was to just edit the path so it works when running from Rider, since that is what I will be doing. It's a very fragile solution though and I wouldn't recommend anyone doing it unless they're in the same position as me. One proper solution would be to instead alter the shell-script so it gets the correct project folder as opposed to just the current directory.