Generate external annotations

[ka4ep]

Are there any plans to provide an automated synchronized way to switch between use of annotations.xml and code attributes, possibly choosing annotations source?

Imagine an external repository which is being forked. The source code has no annotations and originally coded without the use of R#. So I put annotations wherever possible, getting all sorts of NRE possible bugs fixed. Now I have a JetBrains.Annotations package dependency in every project and repository maintainer wouldn't accept a PR with that.

A good solution is to ship a xml along with PR, but there's a problem...
ExternalAnnotations.xml is not being generated automatically from annotated code and not quite trivial to build manually.

By adding attributes in code ([NotNull] etc.) these could be automatically added into xml and then shown from these. And then NuGet package reference wouldn't be necessary in the first place as well as attributes themselves in the code.

[sirduke]

External (xml) annotations are not supported for source code, only for assemblies.
There is alternative way to adding dependencies to "JetBrains.Annotations" is to embed annotation's declarations in you source code, see https://www.jetbrains.com/help/resharper/Code_Analysis__Annotations_in_Source_Code.html

[michael-damatov]

We have a lot of generated code in our solution, but we cannot change the way they generated. It would be nice to apply the external annotations for the source code in such a case.

[ka4ep]

I guess this is the only way for now and requires far less effort for anyone.
Is there any description in the R# SDK on how an xml is read and mapped onto source code? I may give a thought if any automation possible.

[sirduke]

I think it is better to create feature request in ReSharper's youtrack ( https://youtrack.jetbrains.com ) to support xml external annotations for source code

[ngbrown]

Generating external annotations from a forked library would also be a quick way to create the annotations for this repository.