Project and solution files

curb format and curb check format the XML next to your code as well as the code: .csproj, .fsproj, .vbproj, .proj, .props, .targets, .slnx and nuget.config. It's on by default. Every change is whitespace, but the first run does change files: on the repositories it was measured on, between a fifth and two fifths of project files, a few lines each.

curb check fails on a repository whose project files have not been formatted yet. Either run curb format . once and commit the result, or turn XML formatting off (see below) until you are ready.

Curb keeps your layout. It owns two kinds of whitespace and nothing else:

A line holding something that spans lines Curb cannot move (a property whose value is several lines, a multi-line comment, an attribute value with a line break in it) keeps the columns it had, start tag included, so the rest of it is not stranded.

Trailing whitespace on the lines it lays out stays unless trim_trailing_whitespace = true comes from a section for your XML files.

With max_line_length set for your XML files, a start tag that does not fit and that you wrote on one line breaks one attribute per line. Content is never reflowed.

Solution files get two-space indents and <Project … />, the shape Visual Studio writes and would put back.

• Text, CDATA, comments, processing instructions and the DOCTYPE.
• Attribute values and their quotes.
• The order of anything.
• Anything inside an element whose whitespace may be a value: a property, an item's metadata, ProjectExtensions, an inline task's Task body, and any xml:space="preserve" subtree. MSBuild reads <Flag>\n true\n</Flag> as \n true\n, not true.
• A file that is not UTF-8, or whose XML declaration names another encoding. It is reported as unparsable.

Every result is checked before it is written. Curb lexes the output again and compares it with the input token by token; anything but the whitespace above is a verification failure, and the file is left as it was. A file that is not well-formed XML is reported as unparsable and is never repaired.

XML reads the EditorConfig core keys (indent_style, indent_size, tab_width, max_line_length, end_of_line, insert_final_newline, trim_trailing_whitespace and charset) only from sections that name its files: a glob with an extension or a file name in it, such as [*.csproj], [*.{csproj,props}], [*.xml], [Directory.Packages.props] or [src/**/*.props]. A [*], [**], [**/*] or [*.*] section is written for your code, and XML ignores those keys in it.

Without such a section XML uses its own defaults: two-space indents, no width, and the line endings, final newline and trailing whitespace each file already has.

[*.{csproj,fsproj,vbproj,proj,props,targets}]
indent_size = 2
trim_trailing_whitespace = true

The curb_xml_* and xml_* keys are XML's by name, so they apply from any section, [*] included.

Set curb_xml_format = false for the files you want left alone:

[*.{csproj,fsproj,vbproj,proj,props,targets,slnx,config}]
curb_xml_format = false

A file it applies to is not read and not counted. Other XML, such as *.xml or *.runsettings, is formatted only when curb_xml_extensions names its extension.

The curb MSBuild package never formats XML. A build formats the C# it compiles, not the files driving the build. Use curb format from the command line, a pre-commit hook or CI.

See the option reference for every key.