Avoid decorating ErrorRecord during CliXml serialization by KirtiRamchandani · Pull Request #27528 · PowerShell/PowerShell

KirtiRamchandani

PR Summary

ConvertTo-CliXml and Export-CliXml serialize ErrorRecord instances by adding remoting-specific note properties such as ErrorCategory_Activity and InvocationInfo. The serializer was adding those properties to the caller's PSObject wrapper, which caused the original ErrorRecord to gain serialization-only extended members after serialization completed.

This change serializes remoting records through a wrapper with local instance members, preserving the generated CliXml fields without decorating the caller's input object.

PR Context

PSObject.Copy() alone still shares the base object's resurrection-table key, so note properties added to the copy are visible on wrappers around the same base object. The new helper resets the serialization wrapper's instance-member collection before adding remoting-only properties, while preserving existing visible instance members for serialization.

The same path is used for informational records, so the isolation is applied there too.

PR Checklist

Tests pass

Tests

Reproduced before fix: serializing an ErrorRecord increased extended members from 1 to 13 and added ErrorCategory_*, InvocationInfo, SerializeExtendedInfo, and related serialization notes.
Added regression coverage for both Export-Clixml and ConvertTo-CliXml.
Start-PSBuild -Configuration Debug -SMAOnly
Manual verification after fix: ConvertTo-CliXml and Export-Clixml added no extended members to the original ErrorRecord.
Manual verification after fix: generated CliXml still contains ErrorCategory_Category and ConvertFrom-CliXml round-trips the error information.
Start-PSPester -Path .\test\powershell\Modules\Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility\clixml.tests.ps1 -Terse -ThrowOnFailure -SkipTestToolBuild -BinDir <publish> (19 passed)
git diff --check (line-ending warning only)