Consider adding .editorconfig file to exercises

[ErikSchierboom]

Many of our students will be new to the .NET platform. As such, they won't be familiar with the usual conventions applied to C# code. It is possible to define the conventions in an .editorconfig file (see e.g. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/editorconfig-naming-conventions?view=vs-2017#example). With the next version of Roslyn (which will be released somewhere in the near future), it will even be possible for the compiler to throw an error if one of those rules doesn't match. Maybe we should consider adding an .editorconfig file that defines the default .NET conventions?

Note: if we add .editorconfig files, we could also consider supporting the dotnet format tool, to allow users to automatically format the code.

[SleeplessByte]

FWIW, we have added said .editorconfig to exercism/javascript even though 2 spaces is not a language standard.

Since then, we see more "sanely" indented code. Not all IDEs pick up on it, but the majority does. My vote would be therefore: yes!

[ErikSchierboom]

Good to hear! I am sort of hoping for the same result.

[ErikSchierboom]

@SleeplessByte I've taken a quick peek at the exercism/javascript repo, and am I correct in seeing that you've added the .editorconfig file to the repository itself, not to the exercises? Or is is automatically added somehow (if so, how)?

[SleeplessByte]

@ErikSchierboom you're correct -- I'm just testing it out for the contributors + maintainers.

In this proposal you can see us copying over "main repo config" to each exercise! First for .eslintrc and babel.config but that would work as well.

[ErikSchierboom]

Ah nice! Now I just have to think on how specific I want to be in the .editorconfig file.

[SleeplessByte]

I think spaces vs tabs and the size of the .cs files would be a great first step!

[mrtank]

We could also support Resharper configs. They are very deep in details.

[ErikSchierboom]

I think spaces vs tabs and the size of the .cs files would be a great first step!

What do you mean by size? Number of lines? Number of classes?

We could also support Resharper configs. They are very deep in details.

They are, but I must admit I'm hesitant to introduce ReSharper-specific settings. Furthermore, there are already many, many settings available: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/editorconfig-code-style-settings-reference?view=vs-2017#language-code-styles

Ideally, I'd like to keep the editorconfig file relatively simple. Some things I'd also like to not enforce, as it can be very valuable to have a (automated) mentor comment on these things (like var vs explicit type).

[SleeplessByte]

What do you mean by size? Number of lines? Number of classes?

tabsize / number of spaces.:

indent_style = space
indent_size = 5

[ErikSchierboom]

Ah right. What a horrible suggestion by the way, an indent size of 5 ;)

[robkeim]

We've already got an .editorconfig file at the root here:
https://github.com/exercism/csharp/blob/master/.editorconfig

I think what we need is a script to copy this file to all of the directories that contain a project so that when a student clones a specific exercise they get the editorconfig file as well.

Then we need to tweak the settings to conform with what we want.

Am I understanding this right?

[robkeim]

Or maybe we want to have a different .editorconfig file that we use internally for the project compared to the one that we provide for students.