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Microsoft's FxCop is a free static code analysis tool that checks your assemblies for compliance against some built-in rules. You can also develop custom rules and run FxCop to check for compliance of the assemblies against such defined standards.
Getting started
FxCop analyses the MSIL generated by managed languages like C# and VB.Net and is downloadable as a standalone application. You should have a copy of Visual Studio installed in your system -- the latest version is preferred. To get started with FxCop you should first download a copy of it.
What are rules and targets in FxCop?
In FxCop, a rule is a defined standard against which the FxCop engine would inspect an assembly to check for compliance or adherence to the defined standards. A target in FxCop refers to the managed assembly that would be analyzed by FxCop to check for compliance to the defined standards. Note that these defined standards are represented in FxCop using one or more rules. Such rules can be the predefined rules or even custom rules. Note that based on the severity of the violations, FxCop categorizes the messages into...