dotnet/msbuild

WriteLinesToFile Does Not Support BOM Customization

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#6,168 opened on Feb 17, 2021

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 (0 comments) (4 reactions) (0 assignees)C# (1,364 forks)batch import
help wantedneeds-designtriaged

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Description

Context

The WriteLinesToFile task uses UTF-8 encoding without BOM (byte order mark) by default. This is not specified in the documentation and could be useful to have control over.

The difficulty is allowing control over the optional Encoding parameter and control over the BOM without adding a special case for every single encoding.

Some options I sent in the internal thread that started this issue:

  1. We pick a few encodings that are most common/popular/etc. and special case those and no others.
  2. We can pass an optional parameter to override whether s_defaultEncoding applies a BOM.

Let's discuss what potential solutions there are before implementing an improvement.

Contributor guide

Research direction
Explore approaches to allow BOM customization in WriteLinesToFile task, such as adding an optional parameter or selecting common encodings. Discuss trade offs and implementation strategies.
Tech stack
csharp
Domain
backendbuild systemdeveloper experience
Issue type
Feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
Half day
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Active
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Clear
Prerequisites
MSBuildencoding
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
50