I have been struggling with cmd scripts for a while. Here is what the script does:

• It does some preliminary configuration and setup.
• It starts nuget -restore.
• It starts msbuild to produce binairies from a solution.
• It copies the binaries to some target folder with robocopy.

I need all steps to be executed sequentially, so I systematically call into child batch files and start /wait executables. Nevertheless, I found out that msbuild started to run before nuget was done, and robocopy would try to copy the binaries just after msbuild started.

Why is start /wait not waiting?

I struggled with my scripts, trying to find what was wrong with them. Until I discovered that Cmder, the wonderful console emulator I am running my script in, has a feature which interfers with how start works:

The option Process ‘start’ must be turned off, or else the new processes will start in new ConEmu tabs, and this breaks waiting.

Hook ‘start’ command in your cmd’s prompt and batches started in ConEmu tabs to run console applications in new ConEmu tabs.

This has been documented in the ConEmu issue #420.