SatorImaging.StaticMemberAnalyzer 1.2.1

Static Field Analyzer for C# / .NET

Roslyn-based analyzer to provide diagnostics of static fields and properties initialization.

• Wrong order of static field and property declaration
• Cross-Referencing Problem of static field across type

Installation

• NuGet
  • https://www.nuget.org/packages/SatorImaging.StaticMemberAnalyzer/
• Visual Studio Marketplace
  • Install as an extension per user local machine
  • https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=sator-imaging.StaticMemberAnalyzer

Unity Integration

This analyzer can be used with Unity 2020.2 or above. See the following page for detail.

https://github.com/sator-imaging/CSharp-StaticFieldAnalyzer/tree/main/unity

Visual Studio 2019 or Earlier

Analyzer is tested on Visual Studio 2022.

You could use this analyzer on older versions of Visual Studio. To do so, update Vsix project file by following instructions written in memo and build project.

Cross-Referencing Problem

It is a design bug makes all things complex. Not only that but also it causes initialization error only when meet a specific condition.

So it must be fixed even if app works correctly at a moment, to prevent simple but complicated bug which is hard to find in large code base by hand. As you know static fields will never report error when initialization failed!!

It could be happened when reordering field declarations on refactoring large code base.

class A {
    public static int Value = B.Other;
    public static int Other = 310;
}

class B {
    public static int Other = 620;
    public static int Value = A.Other;  // will be '0' not '310'
}

public static class Test
{
	public static void Main()
	{
		System.Console.WriteLine(A.Value);  // 620
		System.Console.WriteLine(A.Other);  // 310
		System.Console.WriteLine(B.Value);  // 0   👈👈👈
		System.Console.WriteLine(B.Other);  // 620

        // when changing class member access order, it works correctly 🤣
        // see the following for details
		//System.Console.WriteLine(B.Value);  // 310  👈 correct!!
		//System.Console.WriteLine(B.Other);  // 620
		//System.Console.WriteLine(A.Value);  // 620
		//System.Console.WriteLine(A.Other);  // 310
	}
}

C# Compiler Initialization Logic

• A.Value = B.Other;
  • // 'B' initialization is started by member access
  • B.Value = A.Other; // B.Value will be 0 because reading uninitialized A.Other
  • B.Other = 620;
  • // then, assign B.Other value (620) to A.Value
• A.Other = 310; // initialized here!! this value is not assigned to B.Value