Elegant way to stop release compilation with error

Question

As you're developing you often use things like

throw new NotImplementedException("Finish this off later") 

or

// TODO - Finish this off later

as a placeholder to remind you to finish something off - but these can be missed and mistakenly end up in the release.

You could use something like

#if RELEASE
   Finish this off later
#endif

so it won't compile in Release build - but is there a more elegant way?

Answer 1

I saw an elegant implementation here

#if DEBUG

namespace FakeItEasy
{
    using System;
    using System.Diagnostics.CodeAnalysis;

    /// <summary>
    /// An exception that can be thrown before a member has been
    /// implemented, will cause the build to fail when not built in 
    /// debug mode.
    /// </summary>
    [Serializable]
    [SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Design",   
        "CA1032:ImplementStandardExceptionConstructors", 
        Justification = "Never used in production.")]
    public class MustBeImplementedException
        : Exception
    {
    }
}

#endif

Answer 2

I would recommend to use #warning:

#warning Finish this off later

And in the Release configuration set Treat Warnings as Errors to True.

In this case in Debug you will see it only as warnings but in release it will throw exceptions.