Overview of .NET source code analysis

• 12/04/2020
• 6 minutes to read
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.NET compiler platform (Roslyn) analyzers inspect your C# or Visual Basic code for code quality and code style issues. Starting in .NET 5.0, these analyzers are included with the .NET SDK and you don't need to install them separately. If your project targets .NET 5 or later, code analysis is enabled by default. If your project target a different .NET implementation, for example, .NET Core, .NET Standard, or .NET Framework, you must manually enable code analysis by setting the EnableNETAnalyzers property to true.

If you don't want to move to the .NET 5+ SDK or if you prefer a NuGet package-based model, the analyzers are also available in the Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.NetAnalyzers NuGet package. You might prefer a package-based model for on-demand version updates.

If rule violations are found by an analyzer, they're reported as a suggestion, warning, or error, depending on how each rule is configured. Code analysis violations appear with the prefix "CA" or "IDE" to differentiate them from compiler errors.

Code quality analysis

Code quality analysis ("CAxxxx") rules inspect your C# or Visual Basic code for security, performance, design and other issues. Analysis is enabled, by default, for projects that target .NET 5.0 or later. You can enable code analysis on projects that target earlier .NET versions by setting the EnableNETAnalyzers property to true. You can also disable code analysis for your project by setting EnableNETAnalyzers to false.

Enabled rules

The following rules are enabled, by default, in .NET 5.0.

You can change the severity of these rules to disable them or elevate them to errors. You can also enable more rules.

• For a list of rules that are included with each .NET SDK version, see Analyzer releases.
• For a list of all the code quality rules, see Code quality rules.

Enable additional rules

Analysis mode refers to a predefined code analysis configuration where none, some, or all rules are enabled. In the default analysis mode, only a small number of rules are enabled as build warnings. You can change the analysis mode for your project by setting the AnalysisMode property in the project file. The allowable values are:

To find the default severity for each available rule and whether or not the rule is enabled in the default analysis mode, see the full list of rules.

Treat warnings as errors

If you use the -warnaserror flag when you build your projects, all code analysis warnings are also treated as errors. If you do not want code quality warnings (CAxxxx) to be treated as errors in presence of -warnaserror, you can set the CodeAnalysisTreatWarningsAsErrors MSBuild property to false in your project file.

<PropertyGroup>
  <CodeAnalysisTreatWarningsAsErrors>false</CodeAnalysisTreatWarningsAsErrors>
</PropertyGroup>

You'll still see any code analysis warnings, but they won't break your build.

Latest updates

By default, you'll get the latest code analysis rules and default rule severities as you upgrade to newer versions of the .NET SDK. If you don't want this behavior, for example, if you want to ensure that no new rules are enabled or disabled, you can override it in one of the following ways:

• Set the AnalysisLevel MSBuild property to a specific value to lock the warnings to that set. When you upgrade to a newer SDK, you'll still get bug fixes for those warnings, but no new warnings will be enabled and no existing warnings will be disabled. For example, to lock the set of rules to those that ship with version 5.0 of the .NET SDK, add the following entry to your project file.

  <PropertyGroup>
    <AnalysisLevel>5.0</AnalysisLevel>
  </PropertyGroup>
  

  Tip

  The default value for the AnalysisLevel property is latest, which means you always get the latest code analysis rules as you move to newer versions of the .NET SDK.

  For more information, and to see a list of possible values, see AnalysisLevel.

• Install the Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.NetAnalyzers NuGet package to decouple rule updates from .NET SDK updates. Installing the package turns off the built-in SDK analyzers and generates a build warning if the SDK contains a newer analyzer assembly version than that of the NuGet package.

Code-style analysis

Code-style analysis ("IDExxxx") rules enable you to define and maintain consistent code style in your codebase. The default enablement settings are:

• Command-line build: Code-style analysis is disabled, by default, for all .NET projects on command-line builds.

  Starting in .NET 5.0, you can enable code-style analysis on build, both at the command line and inside Visual Studio. Code style violations appear as warnings or errors with an "IDE" prefix. This enables you to enforce consistent code styles at build time.

• Visual Studio: Code-style analysis is enabled, by default, for all .NET projects inside Visual Studio as code refactoring quick actions.

For a full list of code-style analysis rules, see Code style rules.

Enable on build

With the .NET 5.0 SDK and later versions, you can enable code-style analysis when building from the command-line and in Visual Studio. (However, for performance reasons, a handful of code-style rules will still apply only in the Visual Studio IDE.)

Follow these steps to enable code-style analysis on build:

1. Set the MSBuild property EnforceCodeStyleInBuild to true.

2. In an .editorconfig file, configure each "IDE" code style rule that you wish to run on build as a warning or an error. For example:

   [*.{cs,vb}]
   # IDE0040: Accessibility modifiers required (escalated to a build warning)
   dotnet_diagnostic.IDE0040.severity = warning
   

   Alternatively, you can configure the entire "Style" category to be a warning or error, by default, and then selectively turn off rules that you don't want to run on build. For example:

   [*.{cs,vb}]
   
   # Default severity for analyzer diagnostics with category 'Style' (escalated to build warnings)
   dotnet_analyzer_diagnostic.category-Style.severity = warning
   
   # IDE0040: Accessibility modifiers required (disabled on build)
   dotnet_diagnostic.IDE0040.severity = silent
   

Suppress a warning

To suppress a rule violation, set the severity option for that rule ID to none in an EditorConfig file. For example:

dotnet_diagnostic.CA1822.severity = none

Visual Studio provides additional ways to suppress warnings from code analysis rules. For more information, see Suppress violations.

For more information about rule severities, see Configure rule severity.

Third-party analyzers

In addition to the official .NET analyzers, you can also install third party analyzers, such as StyleCop, Roslynator, XUnit Analyzers, and Sonar Analyzer.

See also

• Code quality analysis rule reference
• Code style analysis rule reference
• Code analysis in Visual Studio
• .NET Compiler Platform SDK
• Tutorial: Write your first analyzer and code fix