Discover Assembly References

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Introduction

This article shows the mechanism of reflection for loading assemblies that can be very useful to trace references of several modules involved in a software project.

Background

Number of involved assemblies in an IT project grows exponentially, especially with large and modular projects.

Typically, if the system has been planned well, single DLLs are referenced once in a system to avoid circular or repetitive references in different places of the system.

Sometimes, developers lose sight of these references with a specific version that is not influential for assembly loading, but in a fast paced development environment the specific version of an assembly can be important.

Points of Interest

There are some basic assemblies that are always included as references. For example, mscorlib.dll is always included. Admitting that a folder contains all application assemblies of a fixed system, we can discover all references which match with a fixed string filter. For example, if the team leader in an IT project establishes that all assemblies must have the name enterprise(*).dll, we could want to know all assembly references developed internally.

Using the Tool

The tool is very simple to use and it's open to future ideas and developments. The filter field can be valued with a string with which we want to match the discovered assembly's names.

History

• 7^th May, 2008: Version 1.0.0.0 - Provides the basic mechanism to reflect assemblies information