How do I tell ReSharper that an attribute means that a method is used?

Question

I'm playing with SpecFlow, and ReSharper thinks that my step definitions are unused (I guess because they're used via reflection):

[Binding]
public class StepDefinitions
{
    // ...

    [When(@"I press add")]
    public void WhenIPressAdd()   // R# thinks this is unused
    {
        _calculator.PressAdd();
    }

    // ...
}

How can I tell ReSharper that methods with [Given], [When], [Then] attributes (etc.) are actually used? I don't want to use // ReSharper disable UnusedMember.Global comments.

I could also mark each method (or the whole class) with [JetBrains.Annotations.UsedImplicitly]. I don't particularly want to do that either.

Answer 1

You need to use JetBrains Annotations, and mark the attribute with an MeansImplicitUseAttribute. You can either reference JetBrains.Annotations.dll directly, or you can copy the annotations source code (from ReSharper / Options / Code Inspection / Code Annotations) into your solution.

If you need to annotate some external assembly you don't own, you need to create an External Annotation file (xml) in the following folder: %ReSharperInstallDir%\Bin\ExternalAnnotations. There are plenty of examples, you can just copy some.

The external annotations file can also be in the same path as the DLL if you name it DllNameWithoutExtension.ExternalAnnotations.xml.