Make WinSCP commands run synchronously in PowerShell

Question

I'm trying to use WinSCP to script a directory synchronization against a WebDAV location. I'm running it like this from PowerShell:

.\WinSCP.exe -log=.\winscp.log -command "open davs://username:[e-mail]/" "synchronize remote .\test-files /path/to/webdav/test-files" "exit"

This works fine. The files are synchronized. I've deleted the WebDAV directory and rerun it to see that the files make it up there.

The problem is that WinSCP is exiting before the synchronization completes. You can see this by checking the current time after it finishes and comparing to the last timestamp in the log file.

Here's a PowerShell command that demos the problem:

& {
.\WinSCP.exe -log=.\winscp.log -command "open davs://username:[e-mail]/" "synchronize remote .\test-files /path/to/webdav/test-files" "exit"
Get-Date
Write-Host 'Exit code:' $LASTEXITCODE
Start-Sleep -Seconds 30
Get-Content -Tail 6 .\WinSCP.log
}

Output:

Tuesday, April 17, 2018 20:41:52
Exit code: 0
. 2018-04-17 20:42:15.025 Copying finished: Transferred: 177, Elapsed: 0:00:20, CPS: 9/s
> 2018-04-17 20:42:15.025 Script: exit
. 2018-04-17 20:42:15.025 Script: Exit code: 0
. 2018-04-17 20:42:15.025 sess: Destroying session.
. 2018-04-17 20:42:15.025 sess: Closing connection.
. 2018-04-17 20:42:15.025 sess: Connection closed.

As you can see, WinSCP was still writing the log over 20 seconds after the command exited. This doesn't make a lot of sense. How can WinSCP determine if the command worked before it's finished? How can I make WinSCP stop and wait for the command to finish before it exits and before it reports success or failure?

Answer 1

PowerShell does not wait for GUI applications to complete before proceeding to the next command.

You can use piping trick to solve this, as seen in How to tell PowerShell to wait for each command to end before starting the next?

.\WinSCP.exe ... | Out-Null

Though easier is to use WinSCP scripting interface, winscp.com, instead. That's a console equivalent of winscp.exe

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Though interestingly your command-line syntax does not produce winscp.log log file for me in any case. PowerShell seems to corrupt the command-line, when - is used for switches. With /, it works:

.\WinSCP.com /log=.\winscp.log /command "open davs://username:[e-mail]/" "synchronize remote .\test-files /path/to/webdav/test-files" "exit"