Writing Custom Rules for VS 2008 Code Analysis - What a Pain!

I am close to giving up.

With every single effin’ upgrade to FxCop, the API breaks so badly that any former rules go haywire. So I have to spend hours of hacking and searching to try and figure out what the hell changed and how I can address it. The big problem now is that I have to use RuleUtilities.GetAssembly() to get a TypeNode, but that always throws a NullReferenceException, even though the file name I pass in is perfectly valid.

I really like Code Analysis, but I am so tired using an undocumented API.

Update: I’m guessing CommonUtilities is null … which means that something has to load it.

Update: Ha! HA, HA, HA! Think custom rules can’t be tested? I think this is a promising start:

[TestInitialize]
public void Initialize()
{
  AssemblyName commonAsmName = new AssemblyName(
    "FxCopCommon, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a");
  Assembly commonAsm = Assembly.Load(commonAsmName);
    
  Type prov = commonAsm.GetType(
    "Microsoft.FxCop.Common.CommonUtilitiesProvider", false);
        
  if(prov != null)
  {
    object provInst = Activator.CreateInstance(prov, true);

    AssemblyName sdkAsmName = new AssemblyName(
      "FxCopSdk, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a");
    Assembly sdkAsm = Assembly.Load(sdkAsmName);

    Type intUtil = sdkAsm.GetType("Microsoft.FxCop.Sdk.InternalUtilities", false);
        
    if(intUtil != null)
    {
      intUtil.GetField(
        "s_commonUtilities", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Static)
        .SetValue(null, provInst);
      }
   }
}

We’ll see if this holds up …

Update: One step back … getting an error in ResolveAssemblyReference in CommonUtilitiesProvider …

Published: 03.30.2008 03:28:53 PM CST

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Jason Bock

Writing Custom Rules for VS 2008 Code Analysis - What a Pain!