After going through the Appendix A, ‘C# Coding Style Conventions’ of the great book ‘Framework Design Guidelines’ (2nd edition from November 2008), I am quite confused as to what coding style is Microsoft using internally / recommending.
The blog entry A Brief History Of C# Style claims:
In fact, the differences between the ‘StyleCop style’ and the ‘Framework Design Guidelines style’ are relatively minor
As I see it, the differences are quite pronounced. StyleCop says opening brace should be on a separate line, Framework Design Guidelines say it should be after the opening statement. StyleCop says all keywords are to be followed by a space, Framework Design Guidelines say ‘get rid of all spaces’ (even around binary operators).
I find this rule from the Framework Design Guidelines book especially ironic (page 366, 6th rule from the top):
Do not use spaces before flow control statements
Right: while(x==y) Wrong: while (x == y)
This is explicitely stating that the StyleCop style is wrong (space after the while keyword, spaces before and after the equality binary operator).
In the end, code formatted using the StyleCop style has quite a different ‘feel’ from the one formatted using the Framework Design Guidelines style. By following the Framework Design Guidelines style, one would have to disable a bunch of the rules (AND there are no rules that check adherence to the Framework Design Guidelines style…).
Could somebody (MSFT insiders perhaps?) shed some light on this divergence?
How is your team dealing with this? Following StyleCop? Framework Design Guidelines? Ignoring style altogether? Baking your own style?
On a blog I read about this (I can’t seem to find the url) it was stated: the framework guidelines are based and evolved from C++ guideliness (they are all seasoned C++ developers) while the guidelines stylecop provides are more modern new C# only guideliness… Both are fine, make a decision yourself… I personally use the StyleCop ones