Compile au3 scripts using a pipline

[avs]

Hi
I want to compile the au3 scripts using a pipeline into an exe. (The exe I am planning to sign with a certificate afterwards)
I am doing this on Azure DevOps using a windows agent.

$autoitDir = Join-Path -Path "$(Agent.BuildDirectory)" -ChildPath "autoit-portable\latest\install\Aut2exe"
$autoitExe = Join-Path -Path $autoitDir -ChildPath "Aut2Exe.exe"

& "$autoitExe" /in "$srcDir\MyApplication.au3" `
                /out "$outDir\MyApplication.exe"

When I execute that on a computer when logged in to it, this works, the executable is created.

But when I do the same on the agent, it does not work. Unfortunately, even though there is the possibility to run Aut2Exe.exe directly from a command line, it still relies on a GUI being available. For instance to show error messages, they are not returned to the console.

Is there a way to use AutoIt in a pipeline?
Also, is the source code somewhere available so I could have a look by myself? 🙂
I saw there are some repos linked, but none of them made the impression to me that it's the AutoIt source itself...

Thanks a lot!

 

 

[SOLVE-SMART]

Hi @avs ,

I try to summarize: you compile a AutoIt script via Azure DevOps CI pipeline.
These means one or two of the pipeline yaml steps contain your Powershell actions, am I right? You could run this locally (or on a maschine which is not hosted on Azure) and in case you run the pipeline on the Windows Agents maschine, it fails. Right?

The part with the necessary GUI is a bit strange for my understanding. I believe this shouldn't be matter in any case. What ever, I suggest to have a look on GitHub workflows that compiling (build) the executable. Because this should work very similar to your variant on Azure DevOps. I cannot reproduce it, because I rather not use AutoIt much often anymore nor I can access Azure DevOps since I switched to GitLab (and/or GitHub), but I know these should be feasable without any interactive GUI present.

Here are two examples that could be helpful. The repositories are from @WildByDesign who did a good job regarding the yaml files as far as I can see.

• https://github.com/WildByDesign/ImmersiveUX/blob/main/.github/workflows/main.yml
• https://github.com/WildByDesign/WDACTrayTool/blob/main/.github/workflows/build.yaml

@avs I would also be interested to know why you want to do this in that specific way? Maybe you describe your goal even more, than the answers will hopefully also more precise 🤝 .

Best regards
Sven

Edited December 5, 2025 by SOLVE-SMART

[avs]

Exactly.
I want to compile an AutoItscript to get an application which I will deploy to other servers subsequently. We need to rely on that process because we're using a software which provides kind of extension possibilities using AutoIt. They provide some base scripts which we import and extend with our own code.

We started doing more complex things in our scripts and now the executable start being blocked by Defender (which is not bad). But since we still want our stuff to work, we want to create this pipeline to compile the scripts and afterwards sign the executables so they can be whitelisted and will not be blocked anymore.

I'll look into the repo you provided, thanks a lot, also for the quick response. I'll post an update here when I found a solution.

[avs]

I was able to get it working by replicating what Sven posted above.
I can now compile the scripts, sign the executable using a code signing certificate, package the binaries using choco, push it to a repo, everything in a pipeline.
After that I can deploy the executable(s) to the target servers using a different pipeline.

Very nice, working well now. 

Reason for doing that: Automation, and the fact that some security tools detected that the exes were built using AutoIt and therefore blocked them from execution. With this new process we can whitelist them because they are signed by us.

Danke für die Hilfe!

Edited 18 hours ago by avs

[SOLVE-SMART]

You're welcome @avs. Good to know that you could achieve your goal - nice.

Could you share your final yaml by any chance? I would love to see how you did it. Of course I have a idea on it, but a real example would be helpful.

Thanks in advanced @avs ✌️ .

Best regards, Sven.