How to reference .Net Framework Class Library in Documentation

Question

I am working on some documentation and need to reference the .Net Framework Class Library. Does anyone know the best way to do this? I was thinking something like the following:

.Net Framework Class Library, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229335.aspx

Wasn't sure if I should include a date or something. I couldn't find one on the webpage, maybe today's date?

Update: By documentation, I do not mean documentation within my source code. I am talking about requirements documents and User Manuals. These documents are read and approved by people that do not have software engineering/computer science degrees. I have to be very explicit with my references (thus why I can't just say "You can use anything in the System.Math namespace" without providing a reference to the .Net Framework documentation).

Answer 1

What kind of documentation you are working on?

Since you are referencing a native component of the framework, like the .NET Class Library, you do no need to include a date to reference it. If it were you that created the component, then you should put your information to document it.

Just reference the .NET Class Library as a native component of the platform you are using, I guess that's enough =)

Answer 2

MSDN library links notoriously change constantly. There's little reason to believe that this will stop happening, it is likely that the comment in the link will go dead.

Frankly, documenting framework classes in your source code is not very useful. Any .NET programmer knows how to look them up.