Automated source code style checking

[mfenniak]

As someone who is picky about source code style, I think it would be cool if this project implemented a source code style checker into our theoretical automated build and continuous integration system. That would allow pull requests to be checked against the project's source code style and allows us to maintain a consistent styling without ever having to code review for style, or fix style issues later. Some of my favourite Open Source projects are confusing to contribute to because of their horribly messed up and inconsistent coding styles, and I'd like to avoid that if this project continues to grow and gain interest.

StyleCop is the only C# code style checker I'm aware of, but that project has "minimal configuration" of rules, and some of the rules they do have are pretty pedantic. Searching for other options might be a good idea.

[dragan]

Maybe Gendarme would better fit our needs?

[karlgrz]

Gendarme looks very cool.

[mfenniak]

Gendarme is a cool project, but it wasn't quite was I was going for here. Gendarme performs code analysis on compiled assemblies, whereas I was thinking more along the lines of source code level checks to help provide style consistency.

Gendarme's style of checking is ultimately more valuable; it's going to detect real bugs and bad practices, and I would be in favour of using it. This issue was intended to be about code style, which is less important to users of this library, but somewhat important to helping a team work together on this project in the long term.

I've entered issue #90 to perform/track the implementation of Gendarme.