Coding Standard Wiki

Question

At my place of work I've been put in charge of creating a coding standards document. Generally we follow what FxCop and StyleCop tools report to some degree but what we really require is document that will explain when to use a convention, why and maybe even a simple example.

This could be extended in the future for other purposes as well.

The first thing that came to my mind is to have an internal wiki site that we could build up and change easily over time but I've never used a wiki-based engine before and would like some recommendations.

If possible the engine should be in C# so we're able to tweak it to our needs if required.

If you think a wiki solution is the wrong way to go about this then please give an alternative :)

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Update

I've just been informed, although we do have a php server it wont be staying, so I'm afraid php-based wiki ideas are off the table.

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Update 2

Could you also (if possible) let me know if any of these solutions work with Active Directory?

Cheers Tony

Answer 1

We keep an internal wiki at my shop that has almost all of our documentation (not just coding standards). We didn't really see the need to roll our own so we just used MediaWiki...

Answer 2

I second MediaWiki. It's not C#, but it can be a nice excuse to sneak some free software in through the backdoor.

If you guys are a Microsoft shop, though, and are using Sharepoint, it has some built-in wiki-esque functionality.

Answer 3

In one project that I develop, I set up one MediaWiki wiki for development documentation, and one for online help.

I even generate part of the development documentation right from source code and database.

Answer 4

At the shop I'm at they use a commercial package which is really good: Confluence. What's especially nice is that it integrates with LDAP/AD so that you don't need a seperate login and it's build especially with business use in mind and has lots of free plugins. We couldn't live without it.

Answer 5

We use JAMWiki and love it.

It is a solid application, we have had nothing but good interaction with both the application and the developers.

The guy you maintains the code does a great job answering questions and helping users out.

Answer 6

ScrewTurn Wiki is an free and open-source wiki made in C# and ASP.Net. Different database back-ends can be used, like MSSQL and MySQL, but also works without any database. It has several plugins to work with Active Directory.

Answer 7

Brad Abrams has published an online set of C# coding standrds:

http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/articles/361363.aspx

If you go to the starter kits section of the Microsoft ASP.NET site, you will find several wikis to download such as ScrewTurn and Flexwiki. A wiki would be ideal for your needs by the sound of it :-)

Answer 8

I am confused by what you mean when you say you don't have a php server. It runs on every platform known to man. I am noticing most Visual Studio Developers don't know that PHP runs on IIS.

I would go with mediawiki It has the biggest feature set and most add-ons developed for it in case you ever need to port your data elsewhere. If you need to modify your wiki you are doing it wrong.

Answer 9

Mindtouch Deki

Great wiki and it's built on C# and PHP, so you can use it on Mono or .NET It also has Active Directory integration.

Download their ready-to-use VMware image. It started using it on my own PC then moved it to the company's VMware server when they had it ready.