Ignoring generated files when using "Treat warnings as errors"

Question

We have started a new project but also have this problem for an existing project. The problem is that when we compile with a warning level of 4 we also want to switch on

'Treat all warnings as errors'

We are unable to do this at the moment because generated files (in particular reference.cs files) are missing things like XML comments and this generates a warning, we do not want to suppress the xml comment warnings totally out of all files just for specific types of files (namely generated code).

I have thought of a way this could be achieved but am not sure if these are the best way to do this or indeed where to start :) My thinking is that we need to do something with T4 templates for the code that is generated such that it does fill in XML documentation for generated code.

Does anyone have any ideas, currently I'm at well over 2k warnings (its a big project) :(

Answer 1

You can selectively disable warnings with a pragma:

// Disable warning messages 4507 and 4034.
#pragma warning( disable : 4507 34 )

If you can emit such warnings (or an #include) in the generated code files, you're done.

Alternatively, you can disable them globally on the command-line for the compiler:

/wd4326 disables compiler warning C4326.

Then re-enable them (via a header file) in the files you want them for:

// Report warning 4326 as an error.
#pragma warning( error : 326 )

Finally, you can set different compile options for each source file by altering the Properties in the project file. Personally I find that a maintenance nightmare, but there are times you have no choice.

Edit: I see that your source files are C#, not C++.

Using the C# command-line:

to suppress CS0028, you could specify /nowarn:28.

Unfortunately, /warnaserror makes all warnings errors.