C# Compiler Options to report errors and warnings

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12/13/2024

The following options control how the compiler reports errors and warnings.

MSBuild syntax	csc.exe syntax	Description
`WarningLevel`	`-warn`	Set warning level. More info.
`AnalysisLevel`	/	Set optional warning level. More info.
`TreatWarningsAsErrors`	`-warnaserror`	Treat all warnings as errors. More info.
`WarningsAsErrors`	`-warnaserror`	Treat one or more warnings as errors. More info.
`WarningsNotAsErrors`	`-warnnotaserror`	Treat one or more warnings not as errors. More info.
`NoWarn`	`-nowarn`	Set a list of disabled warnings. More info.
`CodeAnalysisRuleSet`	`-ruleset`	Specify a ruleset file that disables specific diagnostics. More info.
`ErrorLog`	`-errorlog`	Specify a file to log all compiler and analyzer diagnostics. More info.
`ReportAnalyzer`	`-reportanalyzer`	Report additional analyzer information, such as execution time. More info.

Note

Refer to Compiler options for more information on configuring these options for your project.

WarningLevel

The WarningLevel option specifies the warning level for the compiler to display.

<WarningLevel>3</WarningLevel>

The element value is the warning level you want displayed for the compilation: Lower numbers show only high severity warnings. Higher numbers show more warnings. The value must be zero or a positive integer:

Warning level	Meaning
0	Turns off emission of all warning messages.
1	Displays severe warning messages.
2	Displays level 1 warnings plus certain, less-severe warnings, such as warnings about hiding class members.
3	Displays level 2 warnings plus certain, less-severe warnings, such as warnings about expressions that always evaluate to `true` or `false`.
4 (default)	Displays all level 3 warnings plus informational warnings.

Warning

The compiler command line accepts values greater than 4 to enable warning wave warnings. However, the .NET SDK sets the WarningLevel to match the AnalysisLevel in your project file.

To get information about an error or warning, you can look up the error code in the Help Index. For other ways to get information about an error or warning, see C# Compiler Errors. Use TreatWarningsAsErrors to treat all warnings as errors. Use DisabledWarnings to disable certain warnings.

Analysis level

The AnalysisLevel option specifies additional warning waves and analyzers to enable. Warning wave warnings are additional checks that improve your code, or ensure it will be compatible with upcoming releases. Analyzers provide lint-like capability to improve your code.

<AnalysisLevel>preview</AnalysisLevel>

Analysis level	Meaning
5	Displays all optional warning wave 5 warnings.
6	Displays all optional warning wave 6 warnings.
7	Displays all optional warning wave 7 warnings.
latest (default)	Displays all informational warnings up to and including the current release.
preview	Displays all informational warnings up to and including the latest preview release.
none	Turns off all informational warnings.

For more information on optional warnings, see Warning waves.

TreatWarningsAsErrors

The TreatWarningsAsErrors option treats all warnings as errors. You can also use the WarningsAsErrors to set only some warnings as errors. If you turn on TreatWarningsAsErrors, you can use WarningsNotAsErrors to list warnings that shouldn't be treated as errors.

<TreatWarningsAsErrors>true</TreatWarningsAsErrors>

All warning messages are instead reported as errors. The build process halts (no output files are built). By default, TreatWarningsAsErrors isn't in effect, which means warnings don't prevent the generation of an output file. Optionally, if you want only a few specific warnings to be treated as errors, you may specify a comma-separated list of warning numbers to treat as errors. The set of all nullability warnings can be specified with the Nullable shorthand. Use WarningLevel to specify the level of warnings that you want the compiler to display. Use NoWarn to disable certain warnings.

Important

There are two subtle differences between using the <TreatWarningsAsErrors> element in your csproj file, and using the warnaserror MSBuild command line switch. TreatWarningsAsErrors only impacts the C# compiler, not any other MSBuild tasks in your csproj file. The warnaserror command line switch impacts all tasks. Secondly, the compiler doesn't produce any output on any warnings when TreatWarningsAsErrors is used. The compiler produces output when the warnaserror command line switch is used.

WarningsAsErrors and WarningsNotAsErrors

The WarningsAsErrors and WarningsNotAsErrors options override the TreatWarningsAsErrors option for a list of warnings. This option can be used with all CS warnings. The "CS" prefix is optional. You can use either the number, or "CS" followed by the error or warning number. For other elements that affect warnings, see the Common MSBuild properties. In addition to the list of warning IDs, you can also specify the string nullable, which treats all warnings related to nullability as errors.

Enable warnings 0219, 0168, and all nullable warnings as errors:

<WarningsAsErrors>0219,CS0168,nullable</WarningsAsErrors>

Disable the same warnings as errors:

<WarningsNotAsErrors>0219,CS0168,nullable</WarningsNotAsErrors>

You use WarningsAsErrors to configure a set of warnings as errors. Use WarningsNotAsErrors to configure a set of warnings that should not be errors when you've set all warnings as errors.

NoWarn

The NoWarn option lets you suppress the compiler from displaying one or more warnings, where warningnumber1, warningnumber2 are warning numbers that you want the compiler to suppress. Separate multiple warning numbers with a comma. You can specify nullable to disable all warnings related to nullability.

<NoWarn>warningnumber1,warningnumber2</NoWarn>

You need to specify only the numeric part of the warning identifier. For example, if you want to suppress CS0028, you could specify <NoWarn>28</NoWarn>. The compiler silently ignores warning numbers passed to NoWarn that were valid in previous releases, but that have been removed. For example, CS0679 was valid in the compiler in Visual Studio .NET 2002 but was removed later.

The following warnings can't be suppressed by the NoWarn option:

Compiler Warning (level 1) CS2002
Compiler Warning (level 1) CS2023
Compiler Warning (level 1) CS2029

Note that warnings are intended to be an indication of a potential problem with your code, so you should understand the risks of disabling any particular warning. Use NoWarn only when you're certain that a warning is a false positive and can't possibly be a runtime bug.

You might want to use a more targeted approach to disabling warnings:

Most compilers provide ways to disable warnings just for certain lines of code, so that you can still review the warnings if they occur elsewhere in the same project. To suppress a warning only in a specific part of the code in C#, use #pragma warning.
If your goal is to see more concise and focused output in your build log, you might want to change the build log verbosity. For more information, see How to: View, save, and configure build log files.

To add warning numbers to any previously set value for NoWarn without overwriting it, reference $(NoWarn) as shown in the following example:

   <NoWarn>$(NoWarn);newwarningnumber3;newwarningnumber4</NoWarn>

CodeAnalysisRuleSet

Specify a ruleset file that configures specific diagnostics.

<CodeAnalysisRuleSet>MyConfiguration.ruleset</CodeAnalysisRuleSet>

Where MyConfiguration.ruleset is the path to the ruleset file. For more information on using rule sets, see the article in the Visual Studio documentation on Rule sets.

ErrorLog

Specify a file to log all compiler and analyzer diagnostics.

<ErrorLog>compiler-diagnostics.sarif</ErrorLog>

The ErrorLog option causes the compiler to output a Static Analysis Results Interchange Format (SARIF) log. SARIF logs are typically read by tools that analyze the results from compiler and analyzer diagnostics.

You can specify the SARIF format using the version argument to the ErrorLog element:

<ErrorLog>logVersion21.json,version=2.1</ErrorLog>

The separator can be either a comma (,) or a semicolon (;). Valid values for version are: "1", "2", and "2.1". The default is "1". "2" and "2.1" both mean SARIF version 2.1.0.

ReportAnalyzer

Report additional analyzer information, such as execution time.

<ReportAnalyzer>true</ReportAnalyzer>

The ReportAnalyzer option causes the compiler to emit extra MSBuild log information that details the performance characteristics of analyzers in the build. It's typically used by analyzer authors as part of validating the analyzer.