Solution-wide code inspections

Most of JetBrains Rider's code inspections only need the source code of a single file to detect code issues. In addition to these inspections, JetBrains Rider provides solution-wide inspections for code issues which are only detectable in the scope of the entire solution, for example, to detect an unused non-private member JetBrains Rider needs to analyze the entire solution.

For the solution-wide inspection to work, you need to enable at least one of the following:

• Simplified global usage checking: select Show unused non-private type members when solution-wide analysis is off on the Editor | Inspection Settings page of JetBrains Rider settings Ctrl+Alt+S.

• Solution-wide analysis: select Enable solution-wide analysis on the Editor | Inspection Settings page of JetBrains Rider settings Ctrl+Alt+S.

Note that even if the reported symbol has no direct usages in your solution, there could be cases where it is used indirectly — for example, via reflection — or it could just be designed as public API. In all those cases, you would want to suppress the usage-checking inspection for the symbol in one of the following ways:

• The recommended way is to decorate the implicitly used symbol with a code annotation attribute. There are two attributes for this purpose: [UsedImplicitly] and [PublicAPI], which are functionally similar, but let you and your teammates understand how the symbol is actually used.

• You can also suppress usage-checking inspections with any custom attribute. To do so, mark the definition of that attribute with the [MeansImplicitUse] attribute.

• And finally, you can suppress a specific usage-checking inspection as any other code inspection with a suppression comment or a suppression attribute.

Similarly to any other inspection, you can also disable or change severity level of any solution-wide inspection. This can be done right from the Alt+Enter menu on a code issue that the inspection highlights. Alternatively, you can disable/enable or change severity levels of inspections on the Editor | Inspection Severity page of JetBrains Rider settings Ctrl+Alt+S — solution-wide inspections are marked with the Non-private accessibility label. Note that you cannot set the 'Error' severity for solution-wide inspections.

When solution-wide analysis is enabled, issues detected by the solution-wide inspections are highlighted in the opened files in the same way as other issues, and they also appear in the Problems window when you run code inspection in specific scope. However, they do not appear in the All Solution Files tab of the Problems tool window Alt+6.

If necessary, you can disable solution-wide inspections or only enable solution-wide inspections on internal symbols for specific projects. To do so, use the Solution-Wide Inspections selector on the Inspections page of the project properties dialog (right-click a project and choose Properties).

Note that independently of the value in this selector, solution-wide inspections would be disabled if solution-wide analysis is disabled in JetBrains Rider options.

JetBrains Rider provides the following solution-wide inspections: