Both at work and my most recent project MetaSharp, I have been working on retroactively hooking up StyleCop to an existing code base. Let me just say that from now on this will be one of the first things I do when I start a new project! It’s sooo much easier to simply fix up new code as you write it than it is to go back over many files and fix literally hundreds of errors all at once.
It’s also important to hook up StyleCop and FxCop or whatever code analysis tool you are using to your build process. Don’t let it be an optional manual step, get it integrated right in with your build project files so you can get those error messages right away.
I’m happy to say that MetaSharp is now fully compliant with FxCop and StyleCop with almost all of the rules turned on. I had to turn down the documentation rules a little bit and the File Header rules. Anything that goes in a file header that is unique to that file defeats the purpose in my opinion.
The moral of the story is that if you don’t turn it on right away its likely to be too much of a pain to turn it on ever! And it really does add a lot of value to the code, I believe.
