Visual Studio: Warn About Missing XML Documentation for Private and Internal Members

Question

I am using Visual Studio 2005 (VS.8.0), and I am looking to enforce the requirement that all class members, not just public ones, be documented. Although it is trivial to install Visual Studio to generate alerts when public, secure or internal secure members are not documented, I am looking for a way for private and internal members to throw the same warning. Any suggestions?

NOTE. I use warning level 4, treating warnings as errors and setting the Generate XML flag.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, Visual Studio 2005 does not provide a way to apply XML documentation to private or internal members and types.

I would recommend trying StyleCop , but it does not support Visual Studio 2005 (in fact, the latest version , unfortunately, does not even support Visual Studio 2008). However, StyleCop can be configured to provide documentation for all members.

But all is not lost, since StyleCop is now open source, so you can get the source code and use it to inspire your add-ons for Visual Studio 2005, which simulates this particular operation.