PowerShell / PowerShell/PSScriptAnalyzer

Enforce presence of '$ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"'

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Issue - New Rule
Dominant language
C#
Stars
2.2k
Forks
414
Avg merge
13h 1m
Merged PRs (30d)
2

Description

Summary of the new feature

Defensive Programming is essential to software engineering. To enable fail-fast methodology in PowerShell, you must add $ErrorActionPreference = "Stop" to the top of every PowerShell file. One can easily forget to add this line; I would like a PSScriptAnalyzer rule that enforces the presence of $ErrorActionPreference = "Stop", or at a minimum enforces explicitly setting $ErororActionPreference.

What is the latest version of PSScriptAnalyzer at the point of writing
N/A (whatever comes in the latest version of VS Code PowerShell extension)

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

The issue names no implementation files or tests. Start by locating where PSScriptAnalyzer rules are registered and tested, then determine how PowerShell files are inspected for an explicitly set $ErrorActionPreference. Done means the analyzer consistently reports missing or non-Stop settings according to the agreed rule scope.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
csharp, powershell
Domain
tooling
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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