narrange-users Mailing List for NArrange - .NET Code Organizer/Formatter

SourceForge Headquarters 225 Broadway Suite 1600 San Diego, CA 92101 +1 (858) 454-5900

Version 0.2.7 of NArrange has just been released, which features a
default configuration that is compatible with the Microsoft StyleCop
member ordering rules.  If you haven't yet tried out StyleCop, I highly
suggest taking a look at it.  It provides fine grain style source
analysis and covers many areas outside the scope of NArrange.  However,
it only reports style violations and does not fix them.  This is where
NArrange comes in to make quick work of formatting your source code to
match the ordering rules.  As this is the first NArrange release with
StyleCop compatibility, please report any issues to the SourceForge bug
tracker.

Also, if you'd like to continue using the old NArrange default
configuration, DefaultConfig.v026.xml has been added to the
distribution.

Thanks, 

James Nies
ja...@na...

NArrange - .NET Code Organizer

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Narrange-users] NArrange with StyleCop Compatibility Feedback
From: ja...@na...
Date: Sat, July 26, 2008 8:26 pm
To: nar...@li...

Hello all,

I'm nearing completion of a version of NArrange that features a StyleCop
compatible default configuration (well, for the most part -- read on). 
As part of this, support for moving using directives within namespaces
will be added.

If anyone is interested in trying out a private build prior to release,
I would greatly appreciate the feedback. This is your chance to help
define the new default configuration for NArrange.

One particular area where I'm interested in feedback is default region
names for methods, properties etc. and how they are grouped. A couple
variations can be used that would still provide compatibility with
StyleCop rules.

For instance, what I have right now would arrange methods as follows:

#region Public Static Methods
<public static methods sorted by name>
#endregion Public Static Methods

#region Public Methods
<public methods sorted by name
#endregion Public Methods

#region Internal Static Methods
<internal static methods sorted by name>
#endregion Internal Static Methods

#region Internal Methods
<internal methods sorted by name>
#endregion Internal Methods

... and so on by accessibility.

However, it may be less verbose and cleaner to omit accessibility from
the regions and have something like:

#region Methods
<public static methods sorted by name>
<public methods sorted by name>
<internal static methods sorted by name>
<internal methods sorted by name>
...
#endregion Methods

I plan on still having regions on by default, but the prior release of
NArrange supports disabling all region directives.

One particular StyleCop rule I find troubling is that fields must be
sorted by const/readonly then accessibility. However, this creates a
problem if you have multiple static fields that reference each other
with different accessibility. For instance, say you had a private
static field that was referenced in a public static field. If the
public static field was initialized in-line, this could cause a problem.

Here is an example:

private static int _version = 10;
public static readonly string Version = _version.ToString();

As is, the above value for Version would be "10", what you would expect.
However, by switching the order of the above lines to match the rules
defined by StyleCop the behavior of the Version field would be incorrect
and return "0". This is due to _version not being assigned at the time
that Version is initialized. I haven't yet decided, but this seems like
an issue with StyleCop or at least that it should support ignoring of
violations in this scenario. It doesn't appear that StyleCop supports
disabling accessibility ordering just for fields.

It is for this reason that previous versions of NArrange preserve
ordering of static fields by default. I'm thinking that it would be
ideal to keep this behavior in the upcoming version of the tool. 
NArrange has been designed so as to not alter the semantics of code. 
Applying ordering rules to static fields seems dangerous, but I would be
interested in everyone's feedback.

The downside to not altering the order of static fields is that you of
course would have several rules broken and would not be able to treat
them as errors in your development process. I'd suggest against
manually fixing the violations after NArrange-ing as you'd have to do
this every time the tool was run. I guess you could also disable the
accessibility and constant/readonly ordering StyleCop rules altogether,
since NArrange would automatically be enforcing ordering for everything
but fields, but I'd like to find a better way. As is now, I have 3
StyleCop violations related to fields in the NArrange codebase, down
from a total had previously been in the thousands. However, this did
take a lot of manual work for adding doc comments and fixing up
parameter lists that spanned multiple lines.

Thanks everyone for joining the list and I look forward to your
feedback.

James Nies
ja...@na...

NArrange - .NET Code Organizer

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's
challenge
Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great
prizes
Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the
world
http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/
_______________________________________________
Narrange-users mailing list
Nar...@li...
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/narrange-users

narrange-users Mailing List for NArrange - .NET Code Organizer/Formatter

narrange-users — Mailing list for NArrange users