Loading an assembly / module into a dynamic assembly

Question

I have one assembly that's created already, say Static.dll, and a dynamic assembly I'm creating at runtime, say Dynamic. Dynamic creates some IL code to create a new type from Static.dll. When Dynamic is created (it saves successfully), the executable, when ran, errors out because it's unable to load the assembly Static.dll type. I believe this is happening since the Dynamic exe output can't find this dll (or at least this is my guess).

How can accomplish adding in this Static.dll reference so that when someone runs the resulting executable output of Dynamic that it can find the referenced types?

I know about Assembly.Load(), but this alone doesn't change anything. Or at least, I'm not sure what this gives me since I don't need to use the type at runtime, but rather when running the Dynamic executable.

Lastly, I control the Static.dll, so if there is something I can do with the project to fix it, It could be done, however, it does need to remain separate (I don't want to Emit this library for every time I create a dynamic assembly). Basically, I think I want to have my dynamic assembly to have a .assembly extern mscorlib in it's manifest save Static is place of the mscorlib.

Thanks

Answer 1

How can accomplish adding in this Static.dll reference so that when someone runs the resulting executable output of Dynamic that it can find the referenced types?

The reference will be added automatically. Note that normal assembly-probing rules apply when your dynamic assembly executes, so in order to find the assembly. You must (one of):

• ship static.dll alongside dynamic.dll
• put static.dll in the GAC (but please: don't do this!)
• run dynamic.dll in a custom AppDomain with a custom probing-path configuration that lets static.dll be found
• handle AppDomain.AssemblyResolve to provide static.dll
• use something like ILMerge to fuse static.dll and dynamic.dll