Separate class for enums? [closed]

Question

What is the general consensus towards a separate class in the business layer to store the definition of enums? Is this bad practice? Does this conform to good n-tier design? At the moment my enum definitions are dotted around different, what I would deem as, relevant classes - but I feel as though they should be in one place. Is this, in fact, a subjective question and relative to how I've structured the rest of the solution?

Answer 1

I don't really understand why you would place an enum in a class - perhaps you meant file?

Personally I have a separate file for each enum with the name of the enum.

I place this file close to where the enum is being used and namespace it accordingly.

If an enum is to be shared across assemblies/namespaces, I will use the lowest shared namespace, so it is visible to the using namespaces.

Having enums close to where they are used will make separating code out into projects that little bit easier (if needed).

I don't see the point in having them all in one file - navigation wise, Visual Studio has more than enough navigation capabilities that this is not needed.