After extensive wrangling and experimentation, I finally have managed to successfully invoke external commands in C# programs, which I hope will make me a considerably more productive C# programmer. So without further ado, let’s dive into the nitty gritty details.

Purpose

First, you might ask: why would one need to do this? Ultimately, the potential to automate all sorts of things by invoking external commands inside a program are nearly limitless. I have already been relying heavily on subprocess.run() in Python’s standard library to do exactly that for a while now. Yet, as much as I have been utilizing that, I recently started to explore if I could implement the same, or at least similar, functionality in other languages. C# has long been my designated language to fall back on, when Python isn’t ideal for the task at hand, such as when I need to easily cross-compile binaries. Therefore, I started looking for whatever documentation and guides I could find on the topic.

Implementation

In the following example, we will be executing a command to update currently installed software on Windows, via the Chocolatey package manager.

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;

public static void WindowsUpdates()
{
    try
    {
        // Update all packages install via Chocolatey
        var ChocoUpdates = Process.Start("CMD.exe", "/K choco upgrade all");
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        // If there is an exception, output the error message
        Console.WriteLine("ERROR: " + ex.Message);
    }
}

This next example (part of the same class) will update MacOS software, via Homebrew.

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;

// Automate updates on MacOS via Homebrew
public static void HomebrewUpdates()
{
    try
    {
        // Ensure downloadable packages are up-to-date
        var HomebrewUpdate = Process.Start("/bin/bash", "-c brew update");
        // Update all installed packages
        var HomebrewUpgrade = Process.Start("/bin/bash", "-c brew upgrade");
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("ERROR: " + ex.Message);
    }
}

Notice how we have to do things a little differently when working with Bash commands. Instead of starting our string that contains our command (and arguments) with -K, like we did with Command Prompt commands, we now begin them with a -c. We also have to pass in "/bin/bash", rather than “CMD.exe”. Otherwise, the basic idea is the same.

You can view the rest of the source code for this project here.

Conclusions

While invoking shell commands in C# with Process.Start() has not been quite as intuitive as Python’s subprocess.run(), and it was rather difficult to find accurate documentation, being able to now do so effectively will be very helpfully in reimplementing certain past projects in C#. In addition to that, I will also look into what other things I can automate with Process.Start().