[MPH-193] Document charset for evaluate goal file output #312

Garret Wilson opened MPH-193 and commented

I'm using Java 17 on Windows with org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-help-plugin:3.3.0. The <output> option allows the evaluated information to be sent to a file. But the documentation does not say which charset will be used!

I was afraid that you might be using the system default charset (which would be very bad). But I did a test:

<properties>
  <foo><![CDATA[<bar>touché 😃</bar>]]></foo>
</properties>
…
<plugin>
  <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
  <artifactId>maven-help-plugin</artifactId>
  <executions>
    <execution>
      <id>foobar</id>
      <phase>generate-resources</phase>
      <goals>
        <goal>evaluate</goal>
      </goals>
      <configuration>
        <expression>foo</expression>
        <output>${project.build.directory}/foo.xml</output>
      </configuration>
    </execution>
  </executions>
</plugin>

It was a huge relief to find that the output file foo.xml contained the word "touché" followed by a smiley face emoticon, encoded in UTF-8!

It is a very good thing that you are encoding the file output in UTF-8 and not some arbitrary, per-system encoding. But this needs to be documented so we'll know that we can depend on that. Thank you.

Affects: 3.3.0

Remote Links:

• GitHub Pull Request #123