Martin’s IMHO AFAIK

IMHO: I don’t claim the universal truth / AFAIK: I write to the best of my knowledge

Standard Windows Cli Tools

Table of Contents

robocopy

Overview

robocopy is the modern, recommended way to do copying (of folders or many files) on DOS/Windows. The syntax etc seem quite straight-forward for long-time users of DOS and Windows sheels. But there is a catch, the used return values.

While standard DOS/Windows cli programs generally return 0 to denote a successful run, and all other numbers represent some kind of error condition, robocopy denotes also some success results with non-zero return values.

Some relevant switches

Switch Description
/S Copy subfolders, but no empty subfolders.
/E Copy all subfolders, including empty ones.
/LOG:Filename Write a log to Filename (overwriting previous log content).
/LOG+:Filename Write a log to Filename (appending to the existing log content).

Exit codes

The basic exit codes are the powers of 2, but some combinations of these are used as well:

Exit Code Meaning Severity More info
0 No files were copied. No failure. ✅ OK The source and destination directory trees are completely synchronized.
1 Some files were copied. No failure. ✅ OK i.e. new files have arrived
2 Extra files or directories were detected. ✅ OK No files were copied, examine the output log for details.
3 (1+2) Files were copied and extra files detected. ✅ OK No failure was encountered.
4 Some Mismatched files or directories were detected. ⚠️ Warning Examine the output log. Housekeeping might be required.
5 (1+4) Some files were copied. Some files were mismatched. ⚠️ Warning No failure was encountered. Examine the output log. Housekeeping might be required.
6 (2+4) Additional files and mismatched files exist. ⚠️ Warning No files were copied and no failures were encountered. This means that the files already exist in the destination directory.
7 (1+2+4) Files were copied, a file mismatch was present, and additional files were present. ⚠️ Warning
8 Some files or directories could not be copied. ❌ Error Copy errors occurred and the retry limit was exceeded. Check these errors further.
16 Serious error. Robocopy did not copy any files. ❌ Error Either a usage error or an error due to insufficient access privileges on the source or destination directories.

(reference for this table: https://ss64.com/nt/robocopy-exit.html)

Report detailled errors in batch file

    if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 16 echo ***FATAL ERROR*** & goto end
    if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 15 echo OKCOPY + FAIL + MISMATCHES + XTRA & goto end
    if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 14 echo FAIL + MISMATCHES + XTRA & goto end
    if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 13 echo OKCOPY + FAIL + MISMATCHES & goto end
    if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 12 echo FAIL + MISMATCHES & goto end
    if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 11 echo OKCOPY + FAIL + XTRA & goto end
    if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 10 echo FAIL + XTRA & goto end
    if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 9 echo OKCOPY + FAIL & goto end
    if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 8 echo FAIL & goto end
    if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 7 echo OKCOPY + MISMATCHES + XTRA & goto end
    if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 6 echo MISMATCHES + XTRA & goto end
    if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 5 echo OKCOPY + MISMATCHES & goto end
    if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 4 echo MISMATCHES & goto end
    if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 3 echo OKCOPY + XTRA & goto end
    if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 2 echo XTRA & goto end
    if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 1 echo OKCOPY & goto end
    if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 0 echo No Change & goto end
    :end

This “fix” is required, because by default (just using the robocopy command directly) it is quite probable that a non-zero exit code is the result, and this is interpreted as error by the build process, thereby failing.

robocopy "$(ProjectDir)Docs" "$(OutDir)Docs" /E

IF %ERRORLEVEL% LEQ 3 (
    EXIT 0
) ELSE (
    EXIT %ERRORLEVEL%
)