Rick van den Bosch - Blog

HowTo: Disable specific Code Analysis rules for a Team Build

Thanks to the MSDN forums (and specifically one Hua Chen), I found a way to disable specific code analysis rules for a team build. In this post I'll combine the steps I followed earlier with the description given at the MSDN forum. I'll start out with some steps earlier on in the process: how to quickly get a list of all the code analysis rules you want to disable (without having to type it all yourself ;) ).

1. Start Visual Studio and create a new project
2. Open the properties for the project and navigate to the 'Code Analysis' tab
3. Set the code analysis rules the way you want them, and save the project (you don't have to enable code analysis: the settings are saved anyway)
4. Close the project/solution
5. Open the .csproj file in a text editor like Notepad or UltraEdit
6. Find the tag named CodeAnalysisRules and copy the value of that tag, which looks something like this:
   <CodeAnalysisRules>-Microsoft.Globalization#CA1301;-Microsoft.Naming#CA1709;-Microsoft.Usage#CA2208</CodeAnalysisRules>
   
   You now have a list containing all the rules you do not want enforced.

Now for the real deal: how to disable specific code analysis rules for a team build.

• Open the TFSBuild.proj file in a text editor (double clicking the file from the source control explorer will open it in Visual Studio, which works fine as an editor)
• Find the PropertyGroup tag containing the RunCodeAnalysis tag
• Set the RunCodeAnalysis tag to an appropriate value (I used Always to override individual project settings)
• Add a tag named CodeAnalysisRules, and paste the rules you copied in the steps numbered 1 to 6 above
• Find the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.targets file at the Team Build Server. It is typically located in C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v8.0\TeamBuild
• Open the .targets file, find the CoreCompile target and copy the entire target
• Paste the CoreCompile target in the TFSBuild.proj at the end of the project file, before the </Project> tag
• Find the following task in the CoreCompile target, this is the second task from the end of the CoreCompile target
  
  <!-- Build using MSBuild task -->
      <MSBuild
            Condition=" '@(SolutionToBuild)'!='' "
            Projects="@(SolutionToBuild)"
            Properties="Configuration=%(ConfigurationToBuild.FlavorToBuild);Platform=%(ConfigurationToBuild.PlatformToBuild);SkipInvalidConfigurations=true;VCBuildOverride=$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\TFSBuild.vsprops;FxCopDir=$(FxCopDir);OutDir=$(OutDir);ReferencePath=$(ReferencePath);TeamBuildConstants=$(TeamBuildConstants);$(CodeAnalysisOption)"
            Targets="Build" />
  
• Import your CodeAnalysisRules to the task in the Properties attribute (see the red part):
  
  <!-- Build using MSBuild task -->
         <MSBuild
            Condition=" '@(SolutionToBuild)'!='' "
            Projects="@(SolutionToBuild)"
            Properties="Configuration=%(ConfigurationToBuild.FlavorToBuild);Platform=% (ConfigurationToBuild.PlatformToBuild); SkipInvalidConfigurations=true;VCBuildOverride=$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\TFSBuild.vsprops;FxCopDir=$(FxCopDir);OutDir=$(OutDir);ReferencePath=$(ReferencePath); TeamBuildConstants=$(TeamBuildConstants);$(CodeAnalysisOption);CodeAnalysisRules=$(CodeAnalysisRules)"
            Targets="Build" />

That's all of it. The rules you selected not to run (and pasted in the CodeAnalysisRules tag) will not be executed during the next build. Hope this helps!