A bug in VS2008 Code Analysis, Generics normal and nested classes
I've found a few days ago a small bug in the former "FxCop" now renamed Code Analysis part of Visual Studio 2008.
While compiling this little piece of code :
[code:c#]
public class Dummy<T> where T : IDisposable
{
public T Test
{
set
{
new NestedDummy<T>(default(T));
}
}
class NestedDummy<U>
{
public NestedDummy(U item)
{
this.Value = item;
}
public U Value { get; private set; }
}
}
[/code]
Which is a trimmed down version of the actual code, I saw a lot of errors like this :
MSBUILD : error : CA0001 : Rule=Microsoft.Reliability#CA2001, Target=ConsoleApplication1.Dummy`1+NestedDummy`1.#.ctor(!1) : The following error was encountered while reading module 'ConsoleApplication1': Could not resolve member reference: ConsoleApplication1.Dummy`1<type parameter.T>+NestedDummy`1<type parameter.U>::set_Value.
This means that for some reason, the Code Analysis tool is unable to parse the metadata to check for some analysis rule. This is not a blocking bug since it does not prevent the build from ending properly, but it displays a lot of error messages, which can be disturbing.
To fix to, I found two solutions : Either move the nested class out of its parents class, or remove the generic constraint on the parent class.
I posted the bug on Microsoft Connect, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that it has already been processed and David Kean from Microsoft wrote that the fix will be available in the next Service Pack of Visual Studio 2008.
Not a big issue but still, nice to see that Connect has an impact.