Microsoft Source Analysis aka StyleCop

A couple of weeks back, StyleCop, which used to be an internal tool was rebranded and publicly released as Microsoft Source Analysis. Right around that time, we were having an internal discussion within the team around what sort of coding style guidelines we should put in place for a new project.

Such discussions are always fun, and can serve as fodder for ongoing back and forth unless someone just gives in. If design guidelines are debatable (eg. Id vs ID), style guidelines are at least an order of magnitude more debatable; everyone has an opinion and a set of preferences around source code. I think what we really need is a system around how code is a model, not just text, and the editor is simply a view over that model that reflects a user's choice. In the meantime, we have guidelines, and tools such as StyleCop to help enforce them.

Speaking about debatable guidelines, it seems one of the big point of debates was around the tool's default rule that tabs should not be used for indentation. I personally agree with that one, but I'll throw in an even more debatable rule that is a preference of mine (which unfortunately the tool doesn't default to): K&R bracing style. You've already seen me use it in blog posts that contains code snippets. Ultimately, independent of specific stylistic choices, a consistent and predictable code base is a first step toward facilitating readability and discoverability. Definitely check out the tool if you haven't already.

For those curious, I actually have a coding guidelines document I use that is mostly based on what we agreed on for the ASP.NET code base some years back. I tried to tweak the settings offered by the tool to create a matching set, though I think I'll need to write some custom rules around ordering and spacing if I want the tool to exactly match my preferences.

On a related note, this tool completely works as expected with Script# projects, as I expected. So, if you're using Script# to build an Ajax app or component, you too can now benefit from this tool. This just shows how a good chunk of both new and existing .NET tooling can be repurposed without much work.