VsEditorConfig

Visual Studio EditorConfig

About

Most sources on the internet recommend checking an .editorconfig file into every repository, much like a package.json or Nuget.config file. This is definitely valid for team or open-source projects, where multiple devs collaborate with different personal coding styles. However, you will likely be using the same quality/style preferences for all of your own personal/private projects/repos. Therefore, to avoid duplicating these preferences into every new repository (a nightmare to update if your quality/style preferences ever change), you can create a single .editorconfig file in its own repository, and have your various repos utilize that one. Essentially, that .editorconfig becomes one of the many "dotfiles" that define your own personal coding environment.

This repository contains such an .editorconfig. I developed it for my own projects, but I hope that my style preferences are general enough to be of use to any Visual Studio project, in any repository. If not, maybe this repo will serve as a point of reference for you to make your own .editorconfig!

Usage

Suppose you have the following directory structure:

root-directory
    VisualStudioEditorConfig
        .editorconfig
    Repo1
    Repo2
    RepoGroup
        Repo3
        Repo4
    ...

If you want to use the same style preferences in all of your repos (Repo1, Repo2, Repo3, Repo4, etc.), then you should put the .editorconfig file in the "root-directory" folder. Unfortunately, the .editorconfig file was cloned into the subfolder "VsEditorConfig". You could copy the file to root-directory, but you would have to re-copy it everytime your style preferences change. The solution is to create a symbolic link in root-directory to the versioned .editorconfig.

On Windows, run the following command at an elevated command prompt. If you do not use an elevated command prompt (i.e., a command prompt opened with "Run as Administrator"), then you will get the error: You do not have sufficient privilege to perform this operation.

MKLINK "root-directory.editorconfig" "root-directoryVsEditorConfig.editorconfig"

On MacOS/Linux, run the following command:

ln -s "root-directory/VsEditorConfig/.editorconfig" "root-directory/.editorconfig"

Subsitute the above paths with those needed for your particular directory structure (absolute paths work best). Once the link is created, you will be able to update the .editorconfig with git pull as normal, and the latest style preferences will then be available to all of your repositories (after restarting Visual Studio).

If you don't like any of my style/formatting preferences, then you can either fork my .editorconfig to use it as a starting point and modify it to fit your particular conventions, or add a separate .editorconfig with your overrides to the individual repos that need those overrides.