Why remove unused using directives in C#?

Question

I\'m wondering if there are any reasons (apart from tidying up source code) why developers use the \"Remove Unused Usings\" feature in Visual Studio 2008?

Answer 1

This seems to me to be a very sensible question, which is being treated in quite a flippant way by the people responding.

I'd say that any change to source code needs to be justified. These changes can have hidden costs, and the person posing the question wanted to be made aware of this. They didn't ask to be called "lazy", as one person inimated.

I have just started using Resharper, and it is starting to give warnings and style hints on the project I am responsible for. Amongst them is the removal of redundant using directive, but also redundant qualifiers, capitalisation and many more. My gut instinct is to tidy the code and resolve all hints, but my business head warns me against unjustified changes.

We use an automated build process, and therefore any change to our SVN repository would generate changes that we couldn't link to projects/bugs/issues, and would trigger automated builds and releases which delivered no functional change to previous versions.

If we look at the removal of redundant qualifiers, this could possibly cause confusion to developers as classes our Domain and Data layers are only differentiated by the qualifiers.

If I look at the proper use of capitalisation of anachronyms (i.e. ABCD -> Abcd) then I have to take into account that Resharper doesn't refactor any of the Xml files we use that reference class names.

So, following these hints is not as straight-forward as it appears, and should be treated with respect.