PowerShell: Start-Process with wait option taking long time to return

Question

I have the following script:

$mArgs = @('myProj.vcxproj', '/t:Clean,Build' ,('/p:configuration=DEBUG'+';platform=win32;OutDir=./'))
Start-Process msbuild.exe -ArgumentList $mArgs -RedirectStandardOutput $tempFile -wait

The above successfully builds myProj. However, it takes a really long time to return. When the above line is reached, I see the msbuild windows for about 2 minutes. Then, it closes. After that, it takes another 8 minutes for the process to complete. If I just run the above in a cmd window, it takes about 2 minutes for it to complete. I tried starting the process cmd.exe and passing msbuild as a parameter, but got the same result. I also tried Invoke-Expression and also got the same results.

Does anyone have a clue what can be causing this delay ?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I am using PowerShell v4.0 Start-Process for running MSBuild on Win2012R2. Usually build time of my solution is 1 min, but on build server it is 16 min. It takes MSBuild 15 min to close all nodes and finally exit (16 min to print "Finished!!!").

PowerShell code:

$process = Start-Process -FilePath $fileName -ArgumentList $arguments
 -WorkingDirectory $workingDir -NoNewWindow -PassThru -Wait
Write-Host "Finished!!!"
$exitCode = $process.ExitCode

MSBuild args:

$commandLine = "/nologo /p:Configuration=Release;Platform=x64 /maxcpucount:2"
 + " "+ $dir + "MySolution.sln"

After adding /nodeReuse:false to MSBuild command line the build time is back to normal (1min).

Here is the working code:

function PsStartProcess([string]$fileName, [array]$arguments, [string]$workingDir)
{
    if (!$workingDir)
    {
        $workingDir = [System.IO.Directory]::GetCurrentDirectory()
    }

    $process = Start-Process -FilePath $fileName -ArgumentList $arguments -WorkingDirectory $workingDir -NoNewWindow -PassThru -Wait
    Write-Host "Finished!!!"
    $exitCode = $process.ExitCode
    $process.Close()

    return $exitCode
}

$exeFileName = "c:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\12.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe"
$commandLine = "/nologo /p:Configuration=Release;Platform=x64 /maxcpucount:2 /nodeReuse:false" + " "+ $dir + "MySolution.sln"
PsStartProcess $exeFileName $commandLine $binDir