Combining PS1 EXE Files: One Package

In PowerShell scripting, it is sometimes necessary to combine multiple PowerShell scripts or EXE files into one package for easier deployment and management. This article explains how to combine two PowerShell scripts that call an EXE file into a single PowerShell script.

Background

In this example, we have two PowerShell scripts: script1.ps1 and script2.ps1. script1.ps1 runs an installer EXE file named installer.exe. script2.ps1 contains other scripting tasks that should proceed after the installer has been run.

Combining the Scripts

To combine these two scripts into one, we can use the Call operator (.&). This operator allows one script to call another script as if it were a function.

However, in this case, we want to call the first script and capture its output, which is the execution of the installer EXE file. To do this, we will save the output of script1.ps1 to a variable and then call script2.ps1.

Code Example

Below is an example of how to combine the two scripts into one:

 # Path to script1.ps1
 $scriptPath1 = 'C:\path\to\script1.ps1'
 # Path to installer.exe
 $installerPath = 'C:\path\to\installer.exe'
Run script1.ps1 and capture output
$output = & { Invoke-Expression (Get-Content $scriptPath1) }
Path to script2.ps1
$scriptPath2 = 'C:\path\to\script2.ps1'
Run script2.ps1
& $scriptPath2

In this article, we learned how to combine two PowerShell scripts that call an EXE file into a single PowerShell script. We used the Call operator (.&) to capture the output of the first script and then called the second script.