Is there a way to make powershell wait for an install to finish?

Question

I have a list of Windows packages that I'm installing via powershell using the following command:

& mypatch.exe /passive /norestart

mypatch.exe is being passed from a list and it doesn't wait for the prior install to finish - it just keeps going. It builds up a huge window of installs that are pending installation. Also, I can't use $LASTEXITCODE to determine if the install succeeded or failed.

Is there anyway to make the installs wait before starting the next?

Answer 1

JesnG is correct in using start-process, however as the question showed passing arguments, the line should be:

Start-Process "mypatch.exe" -argumentlist "/passive /norestart" -wait

The OP also mentioned determining if the install succeeded or failed. I find that using a "try, catch throw" to pick up on error states works well in this scenario

try {
    Start-Process "mypatch.exe" -argumentlist "/passive /norestart" -wait
} catch {
    # Catch will pick up any non zero error code returned
    # You can do anything you like in this block to deal with the error, examples below:
    # $_ returns the error details
    # This will just write the error
    Write-Host "mypatch.exe returned the following error $_"
    # If you want to pass the error upwards as a system error and abort your powershell script or function
    Throw "Aborted mypatch.exe returned $_"
}