start a .exe in the background with parameters in a powershell script

Question

I have a programm which i usually start like this in powershell:

.\storage\bin\storage.exe -f storage\conf\storage.conf

What is the correct syntax for calling it in the background? I tried many combinations like:

start-job -scriptblock{".\storage\bin\storage.exe -f storage\conf\storage.conf"}
start-job -scriptblock{.\storage\bin\storage.exe} -argumentlist "-f", "storage\conf\storage.conf"

but without success. Also it should run in a powershell script.

Answer 1

The job will be another instance of PowerShell.exe and it will not start in same path so . won't work. It needs to know where storage.exe is.

Also you have to use the arguments from argumentlist in the scriptblock. You can either use the built-in args array or do named parameters. The args way needs the least amount of code.

$block = {& "C:\full\path\to\storage\bin\storage.exe" $args}
start-job -scriptblock $block -argumentlist "-f", "C:\full\path\to\storage\conf\storage.conf"

Named parameters are helpful to know what what arguments are supposed to be. Here's how it would look using them:

$block = {
    param ([string[]] $ProgramArgs)
    & "C:\full\path\to\storage\bin\storage.exe" $ProgramArgs
}
start-job -scriptblock $block -argumentlist "-f", "C:\full\path\to\storage\conf\storage.conf"