There are not too many things I hate in the world. Popcorn is one (no joke) another is the feeling you get when you discover something cool in the .NET Framework or Visual Studio and think: Damn! Why didn't I find this sooner. I call it the Last one to the party Feeling.
Today, I'm talking about the SuppressMessageAttribute class (MSDN Link).
This attribute can decorate a class where you would like explicitly exclude a module matching a rule in FxCop due to a false positive. Really it is no different to excluding the message in the FxCop project, but I think this is better because of how visible it is.
When you exclude a message in the FxCop project it gets sucked into a black hole and you never see them again. What if they are just a short term exclusion, like the old fav Microsoft.Design.AvoidNamespacesWithFewTypes - which may apply at the start of a project but not once it is off the ground. Who is going to go and un-Exclude it from the FxCop project?
Also, this attribute takes named parameters, like Justification. Again, FxCop lets you put a note in when excluding in the FxCop project but it gets lost to all but the most determined eyes. Having the reason for the exclusion right there in the code means it has a better chance of getting on-going attention as it may not always be as valid as it is today through circumstance or refactoring.
This attribute requires you to define a symbol - CODE_ANALYSIS. In NAnt you can add define = "CODE_ANALYSIS" on your CSC or VBC Task and/or define the symbol in your Project properties, depending on how you build:
