I had an old boss who was a huge WinBatch fan. He had all sorts of great, useful scripts he brought with him. But, in the end, each and every one of them could be accomplished in PowerShell and usually with only 25% of the code. His “AD Cleanup with Logging” was something like 250 lines of WinBatch, and turned into about 6 lines of PowerShell.
Since PowerShell is the clear direction Microsoft is heading with managing their operating systems and applications, I can’t see investing heavily in WinBatch being a smart move for a technologist or an enterprise. But, we all have our favorites. ☺ From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com [mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of Ryan Sent: Friday, May 30, 2014 10:36 AM To: scripting@lists.myitforum.com Subject: Re: [scripting] To WinBatch or not? WinBatch can be used in the enterprise but I wouldn't suggest it. Powershell can do anything WinBatch can do, so just use that! I really doubt that company would use WinBatch if they were evaluating products today instead of fifteen years ago. On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 10:22 AM, Daniel Ratliff <dratl...@humana.com<mailto:dratl...@humana.com>> wrote: Good info Ryan, thanks. I got into it with a tech here who says WinBatch is perfectly suitable to use for some IT developed apps that go on all workstations. I was arguing otherwise, primarily around the issues of required .DLLs and that they are dropping them in c:\windows. I didn’t really think WinBatch was enterprise suitable, but it honestly sounds like it can be. Daniel Ratliff From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com> [mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com>] On Behalf Of Ryan Sent: Friday, May 30, 2014 11:13 AM To: scripting@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:scripting@lists.myitforum.com> Subject: Re: [scripting] To WinBatch or not? I worked for a Fortune 500 company that required all apps be wrapped in a WinBatch script and that script was what ConfigMgr used. Their positives with WinBatch: 1) It's a small company so they have more pull at getting bugs and features fixed / added 2) It's not easy to learn, so it makes it difficult to send that work to their consulting firm in India who has high turnover 3) They already invested in it, and all their packagers knew it, so why not? I kept trying to get them to switch to Powershell, but left before I could. I highly doubt they would have switched, but I was going to keep trying as long as I worked there! This was less than a year ago. In terms of using WinBatch as an install wrapper, I always found features I needed. I don't know how well it would work to do other tasks administrators need to do, but it works well to simply install something. It can get pretty complex though. With all the logging and standards this company required, a simple MSI install script had a few hundred lines of code. Why did you search online to see what people think of WinBatch? Slow Friday? On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 9:45 AM, Daniel Ratliff <dratl...@humana.com<mailto:dratl...@humana.com>> wrote: I have always had a low opinion of winbatch. I kind of thought of it as a ‘toy’ scripting language, much like AutoIT. It has its place, but should not be used for critical applications and automation needs. I decided to search online today and WOW, it seems I am the only one who thinks this? Thoughts? Daniel Ratliff The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain CONFIDENTIAL material. If you receive this material/information in error, please contact the sender and delete or destroy the material/information. The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain CONFIDENTIAL material. If you receive this material/information in error, please contact the sender and delete or destroy the material/information.
