Wow!  Wow, wow, wow!

I love code analysis tools.  FXCop was a dream come true.  While many developers cringe when they think about that tool, I tend to get a little excited.  FXCop was a great code analysis tool that helped me learn a lot about development best practices.  There are many little nuances to development and FXCop caught them all.  When Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite was release and FXCop was included under the name "Code Analysis", I was ecstatic to say the least.  This great little add on helped me learn all about globalization and naming conventions.  It also saved me from a memory leak or two.

Well today was another glorious day.  Microsoft has announced the release of a new developer tool called "Source Analysis".  This new tool is similar in a lot of ways to FXCop (or Code Analysis), however there are some important differences.  FXCop only performs analysis on compiled libraries - dlls or exes.  Source Analysis will analyze source code directly.  This means that while FXCop is focused primarily on design, the new tool will focus on layout, readability, and documentation. 

The ultimate goal of Source Analysis is to help you produce elegant, consistent code.  Any team member or developer will regard it as highly readable.  Out of the box, this new tool comes with about 200 predefined best practice rules and is fully compatible with Visual Studio 2005 and 2008.  The rule base includes:

After installation, Source Analysis integrates into the Visual Studio IDE and can also be integrated into MSBuild commands.  You can get your own copy of this great tool from MSDN free of charge!