Question

As discussed in Does the order of fields in C# matter?, the order of serializable properties affects, among other things, XmlSerializer output.

But if fields are in 2 files (using partial classes), does anyone know what in fact controls the resulting order? That is, which file’s properties comes first?

(Background: I ask this because I’ve run into a scenario where one of the 2 files is auto-generated from xsd, and the other is manually edited. The test output is different on developer boxes vs. our scripted build box. Presumably this is a side effect of the several differences in the timing and history of the xsd->C# step in the 2 environments. Various ways to fix, but I’d like to understand the compilation process a little better if possible.)

Answer 1

Nothing is guaranteed per C# spec.