Getting ROBOCOPY to return a “proper” exit code

exit coderobocopy

Is it possible to ask ROBOCOPY to exit with an exit code that indicates success or failure?

I am using ROBOCOPY as part of my TeamCity build configurations, and having to add a step to just silence the exit code from ROBOCOPY seems silly to me.

Basically, I have added this:

EXIT /B 0

to the script that is being run.

However, this of course masks any real problems that ROBOCOPY would return.

Basically, I would like to have exit codes of 0 for SUCCESS and non-zero for FAILURE instead of the bit-mask that ROBOCOPY returns now.

Or, if I can't have that, is there a simple sequence of batch commands that would translate the bit-mask of ROBOCOPY to a similar value?

Best Answer

As per here, Robocopy has the following exit code bits that make up the exit code:

0×10 Serious error. Robocopy did not copy any files. This is either a usage error or an error due to insufficient access privileges on the source or destination directories.

0×08 Some files or directories could not be copied (copy errors occurred and the retry limit was exceeded). Check these errors further.

0×04 Some Mismatched files or directories were detected. Examine the output log. Housekeeping is probably necessary.

0×02 Some Extra files or directories were detected. Examine the output log. Some housekeeping may be needed.

0×01 One or more files were copied successfully (that is, new files have arrived).

0×00 No errors occurred, and no copying was done. The source and destination directory trees are completely synchronized.

Just add if/else statements that EXIT /B 0 when the return value is 1 or maybe 0, and EXIT /B 1 otherwise. Even if files might have been copied, there's something wrong that would need manual intervention.

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Linux – exit code 128, what’s the reason

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Bash itself returns the exit status of the last command executed, unless a syntax error occurs, in which case it exits with a non-zero value.

The last command is the bash builtin exit (from man page)

exit [n]

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bash$ echo $BASH_VERSION
4.1.10(4)-release

bash$ exit foo
exit
bash: exit: foo: numeric argument required
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255

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