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Uses

If you need to send the output of a Liquibase command like generate-changelog, update-sql, or diff to a text file that does not use UTF-8, you must specify the correct character encoding. This ensures that all symbols in your file display correctly.

Alternative or legacy character encodings include US-ASCII, Windows-1252, UTF-16, and others.

Syntax

You can set this parameter in the following ways:

Option

Syntax

Liquibase properties file (defaults file)

liquibase.outputFileEncoding: <string>

Global flow file argument

globalArgs: { output-file-encoding: "<string>" }

Global CLI parameter

liquibase --output-file-encoding=<string> update --changelog-file=example-changelog.xml

JVM system property (JAVA_OPTS environment variable)

Unix:

JAVA_OPTS=-Dliquibase.outputFileEncoding=<string>

Windows:

JAVA_OPTS=-D"liquibase.outputFileEncoding"=<string>

Liquibase environment variable

LIQUIBASE_COMMAND_CHANGELOG_FILE=<string>

For more information, see Working with command parameters.

output-file-encoding

Last updated: September 2, 2025

The --output-file-encoding global parameter is a string that determines which character encoding to use when writing Liquibase command outputs to external files. By default, it is set to UTF-8.