dotnet-t4: Default .txt extension doesn't match VS

[bricelam]

Visual Studio peaks at the template directive's language argument to determine the default output extension. It uses .cs for C# and .vb for VB. If the language argument isn't specified, it assumes C#.

mono-t4, however appears to use .txt as the default extension. This requires me to specify the -o command-line option duplicating the input path and filename.

t4 -o ./src/MyApp/MyTemplate.cs ./src/MyApp/MyTemplate.tt

Would you consider changing the default to align better with the Visual Studio tooling? Or would this be too much of a breaking change?

[devlead]

You can control the extension by using the T4 Output Directive i.e.

<#@ output extension=".cs" #>
public class MyClass
{
}

[bricelam]

Yes, that is an alternative workaround to this issue.

[mhutch]

Changing it for preprocessed templates per #130 definitely makes sense.

However, I'd like to create a perception that T4 is for generating any kind of text, not just C#/VB.NET code, and keeping it as .txt would help with that I think?