Inquires regarding the design of the IndentedTextWriter class

[FilipToth]

Hi, all! I just have a couple of questions about the design choices made when designing the IndentedTextWriter class.

The namespace

Why did the runtime teams decide on putting this into System.CodeDom.Compiler? I understand it's a third-level namespace, which is good for these not so crucial APIs. But I don't feel like putting this into System.CodeDom.Compiler serves its purpose. Something like System.IO would be more appropriate, In my opinion.

Where is it?

I was browsing the runtime's source and I couldn't find the IndentedTextWriter class in the System.CodeDom.Compiler namespace. I did find ExposedTabStringIndentedTextWriter, but that inherits from IndentedTextWriter so, still not the correct class.

The problems with changing the namespace

• That would be a breaking change and we all don't like those especially for something minor like this.
• Polluting the System.IO namespace with this class is something I'm not sure we want to do at this stage.

So, what did I miss?

PS: I didn't want to open an issue for something as minor as this, and the review/runtime teams are already very busy as it is, so I'll just put it here.

[huoyaoyuan]

Why did the runtime teams decide on putting this into System.CodeDom.Compiler?

Because it was introduced and designed with CodeDom

Where is it?

Search with https://source.dot.net , and you will find it in CoreLib.

The whole CodeDom product should be considered legacy after roslyn came out. Just don't touch it.

[FilipToth]

I see, are there any plans on having an updated IndentedTextWriter class or something similar? I know it doesn't solve a big problem, but still would be nice to have.

[huoyaoyuan]

I'm not seeing any. System.Text.Json doesn't even rely on TextWriter because it's not performant enough.

[FilipToth]

Alright, thank you for the informative answer.