XML documentation

I want the handling of XML documentation to be identical to how VB Commenter worked in VS2003. That is, I want the documentation to be generated when I type ''', but I don't want the background compiler to waste precious CPU cycles analyzing the comments or wait for an XML documentation file to be generated whenever I compile my app. Is this possible?

Thanks,
Lance

[626 byte] By [ljlevend] at [2008-2-4]

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# 1

Short answer, no.

There is a project level switch to turn the generation of XML documentation on/off but it is a complete on/off switch, turing off XML doccumentation will also turn off the generation of the comment stub when you type ''' in the editor. We decided to keep the XML documentation current to enable the full value of the information to be realized, as you work with methods/properties in your code that have XML documentation comments you see that information in the intellisense/tooltip windows just as you do for referenced assemblies.

We've kept a close eye on the performance implications of this also and haven't seen significant problems. If you are seeing something different we'd like to hear about it and as much of the specific characteristics of the project/solution you can share.

thanks
Jay

JaySch_MS at 2007-9-8 >

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# 2

Jay,

Thanks a lot for the info. I mentioned the performance issue because the background compiler performance is already a significant issue in my project(s) and I assume that enabling XML documentation would only make things worse. It also seems that the compile times would be longer if I generate XML documentation files. Is this not the case or were you only referring to the BC in regards to performance?

Another issue at this point is that I have 1000's of comments that I created using VB Commenter. Many (perhaps most) of these are invalid because there was no enforcement in VS2003 and I only used the comments as a documentation tool. I found VB Commenter to be an excellent documentation tool, even though I never generated an XML documentation file. It would be very nice if there was a way for me to continue to add XML documentation without warnings being generated from my previous comments. As it is now, I must turn off XML documentation so that the Warnings list is not flooded by irrelevant messages. Otherwise, I'm concerned that I might miss a warning that would have an adverse affect on my app. I hope that some day I will be able to go back and clean up all of my previous comments. But, realistically, I'm not sure when or if that will happen.

Thanks again,
Lance

ljlevend at 2007-9-8 >

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