A number of people have asked: Is there a way to customize the existing code metrics or add additional ones? The simple answer at this time is No.  There are no extension points or customizations available at this time for code metrics.  This feature was added late in the cycle for VS 2008...

One not very well known feature that lights up when connected to a Team Foundation Server, is the ability to enforce that Code Analysis be run before every check-in. Called a Code Analysis Policy , this feature allows your team to find and fix Code Analysis warnings earlier in the product cycle rather...

Once you turn on the new spelling rules that we've added to Visual Studio 2008, you will want to start to customize the words that it fires on; this is where the new custom dictionary support comes in. A custom dictionary in its basic form, similar to the concept in Microsoft Word, allows you to silence...

Surprisingly, one the biggest requests for Code Analysis in Visual Studio 2005 was to include the spelling rules that shipped with the FxCop standalone. We had Microsoft consultants tell us that they actually had trouble moving some customers from FxCop to Code Analysis because they were not included...

For Visual Studio 2008, we have added a new MSBuild property that allows you to easily treat all Code Analysis warnings as build errors. This can be useful for example, if you want to force that any firing of a Code Analysis rule to break the build during a nightly Team Build without needing to individually...

A while ago I mentioned that FxCop (and hence Managed Code Analysis) naming and design rules only fire on publicly visible types and members. As you may recall, there were a couple of reason for this: The .NET Framework Design Guidelines , which FxCop/Managed Code Analysis enforces, only contains...

A little known feature of FxCop (in particular FxCopCmd.exe) is its ability to be integrated into the build process within Visual Studio. Although not a replacement for the Code Analysis functionality available within both Visual Studio Team Edition for Developers and Visual Studio Team Suite, it allows...

I've noticed that Code Analysis sometimes places suppressions in a file called GlobalSuppression.cs (GlobalSuppressions.vb in Visual Basic). Why this is file needed and it is possible to change its name? What is this file? When you right-click on a warning and choose Suppress Message(s) , Code...

If your team has a minbar of Managed Code Analysis rules that must be explicitly fixed or suppressed, it is possible to share the Managed Code Analysis rule settings over multiple MSBuild projects (.csproj, .vbproj). To share the minbar between multiple projects, do the following: Using Visual...

Daniel Fisher has posted a entry on using a macro to quickly enable Code Analysis on multiple projects . The macro also allows you to apply the same rule selections across an entire solution. Thanks Daniel!

By default, the FxCop naming and design rules only fire on publicly visible types and members. There are a couple reasons for this: The .NET Framework Design Guidelines , which FxCop enforces, only contains guidelines for publicly visible API. What internal Microsoft teams (and you) do with their...

DoNotDeclareReadOnlyMutableReferenceTypes is a rule that checks for visible read-only fields that are mutable reference types (classes). A mutable type is a type whose instance data can be changed once it has been constructed. For example, the following type is considered mutable: namespace Microsoft...