Question

What is the accepted pattern for CmdLets and disposable fields?

The FxCop rule is: Types that own disposable fields should be disposable

But unless PowerShell calls the dispose method…. it wont really help to implement the pattern.

so far I go with Begin/EndProcessing methods to set up and clear out the fields.

I could sadly not find any documentation on whether PowerShell properly calls the Dispose method.

Answer 1

When implementing a Cmdlet (or PSCmdlet) derived command, implement IDisposable and PowerShell will dispose your command for you when the pipeline completes. It’s as simple as that. Are you seeing behaviour that contradicts this?

Update, a la LetMeGoogleThatForYou:

“…For this reason, a cmdlet that requires object cleanup should
implement the complete IDisposable pattern, including a finalizer, so
that the runtime can call both the
System.Management.Automation.Cmdlet.EndProcessing and Dispose methods
at the end of processing.”

From: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms714463(v=vs.85).aspx