Despite efforts to establish code conventions, practical application often faces challenges within teams. To make agreements work in practice, create a unified technical environment and follow a few simple rules.
Recommended practices
- Unified Code Cleanup profiles — In Visual Studio or Rider, use the same Code Cleanup profile settings across the team so everyone formats code consistently.
- IDE configuration — Configure your IDE to run Cleanup on file save to enforce style and small refactorings in real time.
- Use templates — Provide standardized class and interface templates to reduce boilerplate and keep structure consistent.
- EditorConfig — Add and maintain a .editorconfig that defines basic formatting and refactoring rules for all editors.
- No warnings policy — Agree that warnings are treated seriously (ideally none are allowed) to maintain code quality from the start.
- Static analyzers — Integrate static analysis tools such as Roslynator, Meziantou, and SonarQube to catch issues before code review.
- Suppression strategy — Define which analyzer rules may be suppressed and add corresponding exceptions (or rule overrides) to .editorconfig.
Why this matters
These tooling and configuration agreements don’t replace team-specific coding conventions. At the start of any convention, clearly define objectives: improve code quality, reduce bugs, and simplify code review.
By adopting these practices you’ll raise product quality and foster a culture of ownership and professional growth across the team.