Visual Studio Hacks

Follow the Rules with FxCop #65

Chapter 7, Help and Research

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HACK

7. Check the Use Output Window box. Then click OK.

8. Click File

➝ Tools, and verify that you now see FxCop as an option.

Figure 7-34 shows a completed External Tools dialog.

Now that FxCop is set up as an external tool in Visual Studio, you can run

FxCop on your .NET assemblies very easily:

1. Open a Visual Studio Project.

2. Click Tools

➝ FxCop.

3. The Output window will appear and show the results of the analysis

(see Figure 7-35).

More FxCop Resources

The goal of this hack is to expose you to when, why, and how you would

use FxCop. However, there is much more to FxCop that cannot be covered

in detail here, such as the ability to create your own rules. Here are addi-

tional FxCop resources:

FxCop integrated help

You can find out much more about the tool and how to best use it by

reading its built-in help functionality.

Figure 7-34. Completed dialog for adding FxCop as an external tool