Simplify documentation with inheritance.

[hallambaker]

I like to document my code but I find C# makes me do a lot of work that is repetitive in ways that tend to lead to inconsistency and error.

Consider the case where I have classes A, B, C which each declare one method:

class A {
///

/// Some documentation
///

/// A parameter
public virtual int Method (string param1) => 1
}

class B : A{
///

/// The exact same documentation repeated
///

/// A parameter
public override int Method (string param1) => 1
}

class C : A {
///

/// A different method with a new documentation.
///

/// A parameter with the same purpose as before
public virtual int Method2 (string param1) => 1
}

Wouldn't it be much nicer if classes inherited documentation from the parent class for overriden methods in the exact same way that they inherit code?

Further, Wouldn't it be a big code improvement win if I could assign a specific documentation line to a parameter name so that it is then reused throughout a project?

class B : A{
///
/// Some additional information specific to the overriden implementation.
public override int Method (string param1) => 1
}

class C : A {
///

/// A different method with a new documentation.
///

///
public virtual int Method2 (string param1) => 1
}

This would seem to compliment the recent thrust of C# language extensions to enable repetitive coding to be eliminated.

Of course, Sandcastle, would also need to be updated to recognize this stuff...

[333fred]

I think you're looking for https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/programming-guide/xmldoc/inheritdoc.

[hallambaker]

That should do it, hadn't noticed it in the 16.4 release notes...

[333fred]

No worries, there's lots of features being added all the time.