How do I deduce path to Azure SDK csrun.exe conveniently? - windows

Question

I have some problems with Azure Compute Emulator not restarting properly. To resolve this I want to add csrun /devfabric:stop call to a pre-build step in Visual Studio solution.
The problem is csrun.exe is located in C:\Program Files\Windows Azure SDK\v1.4\bin on my machine and that path is not on the %PATH% directories list. I don't want to hardcode that path in my solution.
Is there some way to deduce the path like using some environment variable or something similar?

Answer 1

You can read the Azure SDK path from the registry by version. The last part of the path is the version ... Your code can either be set to a version or you can iterate over the v keys finding the latest. I would recommend having a constant for the version you support and as you take a new SDK as a pre-req.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\ServiceHosting\v1.4
There's an "InstallPath" key under those paths.

Answer 2

I had this same problem and I produced a PowerShell script that sets an environment variable with the path to the SDK bin folder. It will automatically search the registry and find the latest installed version. It also has a fallback to the alternate registry location, depending whether your script runs in 32bit or 64bit mode. Hope it helps!
Disclaimer: I removed some stuff from the script before posting it here and I didn't test it afterwards but I think it's not difficult to debug/adjust it to your needs.
#the script attempts to perform the following:
#1. look for the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\ServiceHosting" registry key
#2. if the above key is present then read the child keys and retrieve the largest version number
#3. from the largest version number key retrieve the "InstallPath" string value to determine the path of the latest Azure SDK installation
#4. add an environment variable called "AzureSDKBin" (if not already added) with the path to the "bin" folder of the latest Azure SDK installation
#define the name of the config variable
$azureSDKPathVariable = 'AzureSDKBin'
$azureRegistryKey = 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\ServiceHosting'
$azureAlternateRegistryKey = 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\ServiceHosting' #this is in case the PowerShell runs in 32bit mode on a 64bit machine
$azureMatchedKey = ''
#check if the environment variable was already defined
if ([environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable($azureSDKPathVariable,"User").Length -eq 0) {
'Variable ' + $azureSDKPathVariable + ' is not defined, proceeding...'
#try reading the registry key
$keyExists = Get-Item -Path Registry::$azureRegistryKey -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
$azureMatchedKey = $azureRegistryKey #make a note that we found this registry key
#stop if the key does not exist
if ($keyExists.Length -eq 0) {
'Could not find registry key in primary location: ' + $azureRegistryKey + ', attempting search in alternate location: ' + $azureAlternateRegistryKey
#search the alternate location
$keyExists = Get-Item -Path Registry::$azureAlternateRegistryKey -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
$azureMatchedKey = $azureAlternateRegistryKey #make a note that we found this registry key
if ($keyExists.Length -eq 0) {
'Could not find registry key for determining Azure SDK installation: ' + $azureAlternateRegistryKey
'Script failed...'
exit 1
}
}
'Found Azure SDK registry key: ' + $azureMatchedKey
#logic for determining the install path of the latest Azure installation
#1. get all child keys of the matched key
#2. filter only keys that start with "v" (e.g. "v2.2", "v2.3")
#3. sort the results by the "PSChildName" property from which we removed the starting "v" (i.e. only the version number), descending so we get the latest on the first position
#4. only keep the first object
#5. read the value named "InstallPath" under this object
$installPath = (Get-ChildItem -Path Registry::$azureMatchedKey | Where-Object { $_.PSChildName.StartsWith("v") } | sort #{expression={ $_.PSChildName.TrimStart("v") }} -descending | Select-Object -first 1| Get-ItemProperty -name InstallPath).InstallPath
'Detected this Azure SDK installation path: "' + $installPath + '"'
#set the variable with the "bin" folder
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable($azureSDKPathVariable, $installPath + 'bin\', "User")
'Assigned the value "' + [environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable($azureSDKPathVariable,"User") + '" to environment variable "' + $azureSDKPathVariable + '"'
}
else {
'Environment variable "' + $azureSDKPathVariable + '" is already defined and has a value of "' + [environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable($azureSDKPathVariable,"User") + '"'
}