CI: PowerShell startup intermittently fails with `procargs` errno 5 on macOS

[simonrozsival]

Android framework version

N/A — this is an Azure Pipelines agent/PowerShell startup failure that occurs before the test-slicing script runs.

Affected platform version

Azure Pipelines macOS agent in the MSBuild Emulator Tests macOS > MSBuild+Emulator 7 lane.

Observed in public build 1579507, task Slice unit tests with filter.

Description

The PowerShell@2 task failed while starting PowerShell, before executing the test-slicing script. The startup path reported a failed macOS procargs call (errno 5) and threw Microsoft.PowerShell.ManagedPSEntry+StartupException.

This appears to be an intermittent hosted-agent/process-startup failure rather than a test failure. It made the MSBuild+Emulator 7 CI lane fail without running its assigned tests.

Steps to Reproduce

No deterministic local reproduction is currently known.

1. Run the public dotnet-android pipeline on the macOS hosted agents.
2. Observe the Slice unit tests with filter PowerShell task in an MSBuild emulator lane.
3. In the affected run, PowerShell fails during startup before the script executes.

Did you find any workaround?

Rerun the affected CI job or pipeline.

Relevant log output

Call to 'procargs' failed with errno 5
Microsoft.PowerShell.ManagedPSEntry+StartupException
PowerShell exited with code 'null'.

The failure occurred in build 1579507, MSBuild Emulator Tests macOS > MSBuild+Emulator 7 > Slice unit tests with filter.