I have a dll project which uses some third party dlls. I would like the compilation result to be just one big dll with all the third party dlls included in it. How can I do this in Visual Studio 2010?
You need to use ILMerge, assuming the DLLs are all managed:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17630
And some related questions:
ILMerge Best Practices
ILMerge question
ILMerge is a .NET only solution (does not work for unmanaged dlls)
A nice tool is NETZ (.net executable compresser and packer) which compresses all your dependencies in a single exe / dll file.
I have not used it recently so I can't tell if it is compatible with .NET 4.0
And it didn't get many updates in a while but I would give it a try.
http://madebits.com/netz/
There are several approaches that you can take here to achieve this. Here are a couple:
You could include the source, if available in one project, and then compile it to a single binary.
You can add the external assemblies as resources, and load them dynamically at runtime.
You can use something like Eazfuscator.Net, which uses ILMerge to merge assemblies at compile time. (can also use ILMerge directly, but Eazfuscator has nice wrapper features) Eazfuscator .Net
Related
I have a .Net add-in and within this I have referenced a DLL I have made in C++/CLI. The DLL was designed against the OpenCV API - so now my .Net application can take advantage of the cool graphics capabilities offered by OpenCV.
The problem occurs when I deploy my add-in to other computers. When the user enacts a part of the program that specifically calls upon my C++ DLL it complains about missing the reference:
I suspect the code does not actually know where the DLLs are located but within my dev environment everything (obviously) works as I will have my environment set up different to your standard build PC.
What am I missing here ?
How can I successfully call DLLs created in C++ from a C# add-in? Bearing in mind add-ins are supposed to simplify the customisation of software like Office etc. This is very important - I have to be able to roll in non-.Net DLLs into my project and my code be able to find them.
My dll is just a plain dll, not a COM compatible dll (maybe it should be?) or should I be decorating my C++ code with __declspec(dllexport) a la https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/exporting-from-a-dll-using-declspec-dllexport?view=vs-2017
So 2 things
Use Dependancy Walker to identify any dependancies on your dll and the dlls it uses further down the 'tree' hieracrchy. I found 2 that were missing and it wasn't obvious without this useful tool. Don't be overwhelmed with the results it gives you, just take notice of the missing dlls it's complaining about.
Make sure your dll is referenced within your project and not outside of it in some other folder where you built it.
This fixed my problem - in general just make sure your dlls are on the same path as your executable.
is it possible to create a AnyCpu assembly with SWIG? I have both the x86 and x64 binaries compiled (c++) and I'm able to generate a SWIG P/Invoke Wrapper. But the wrapper is dependent on the invoked native dll (which is CPU specific). But I like the idea of let the executable decide instead of having two different executables. I'm would put the dlls in seperate folders (e.g. named x64/x86) if this is helpful. Or do I have to write a handmade wrapper in C# which decides to load the right dll?
Thanx for input.
It seems you have to roll you own wrapper.
I came across the solution CLRZMQ was using for similar reasons.
They solved it pretty well by embedding both .dll versions and extracting those accoring to the current platform:
They determined the running platform by using Environment.Is64BitProcess and adding a x86 or x64 suffixe + version string before extracting and loading the correct dll.
Here is their solution to the problem and here is the corresponding discussion which gives different ideas on how to solve it. Also interesting is their SafeLibraryHandle which I just found out about.
I am using a third party dll file which is referenced within a visual studio project using C#. In previous experiences on other projects, I was able to load objects from different dlls using dllImport, then create objects as if the source code of the dll was included in my project. However, that method is not working with the 3rd part dll. The program works flawlessly on the computer I am programming it on, however, when I run it on a different computer, it cannot find the dll. Is there a method to include the dll compiling and avoid using dynamic linking?
The default setting of .NET Framework is to load native libraries from system paths, not current directory.
But you might learn from System.Data.SQLite project (open source), so as to pre-loading native libraries from current folder, and based on OS bitness,
http://system.data.sqlite.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/downloads.wiki
Although generating a mixed mode assembly (native and managed bits are merged) sounds like a better solution, System.Data.SQLite users often are confused. Thus, I recommend the pre-loading approach.
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Possible Duplicate:
Embedding DLLs in a compiled executable
I want to compile my C# application to a single exe file. The problem is that my project depends on many other projects resulting in many dlls in the Release folder when I compile it. Is there any way to just make an exe with these dlls included?
Note: It does not need to be independent from the .NET framework. I assume that anyone using this exe will have that installed.
.NET ships with a tool called ILMerge where multiple assemblies can be packaged together into a single file. You would use it like:
ilmerge /target:winexe /out:myoneexecutable.exe Foo.exe Bar1.dll Bar2.dll
ILMerge is one option, but it can't merge WPF assemblies. You can embed assemblies as resources and dynamically load them. See this Richter article.
I believe the closest you will get to being able to compile to a single executable is using Visual Studio's Setup Project functionality / Wizards to generate a standard MSI package which you can then use to distribute your application.
There may well be 3rd party tools available that allow you to condense everything down into one file, however. But I don't believe this will gain you anything over the standard MSI approach - indeed, it's just an extra manual step in the build process which you don't strictly need.
I have an application that utilises the BouncyCastle framework, how can I package this application so that I don't have to manually put BouncyCastle's .dll on others computers? I'm assuming that this can be done with an installer or something similar? Where do applications look for referenced third party libraries by default?
As an alternate approach, you can inject assemblies into your main assembly.
There are cemmercial tools that support this like DeepSea Obfuscator or you can use ilmerge.
The general way of working is that you develop using separate assemblies and when you ship the product you do an additional build step that merges assemblies into one big assembly. You can even internalize the injected assemblies so only your public interface is accessible.
This way you can deploy your product as a single assembly which is especially nice if you're building components.
To answer your second question; the .NET framework will look in a couple of locations. The GAC is dominant but if you make sure the referenced assembly is in the same folder as your main assembly .NET will find it. No need to register it in the GAC.
Since BouncyCastle is a managed library, if you create an installer project in Visual Studio and add your application's exe to it, the installer will automatically detect the dependency on BouncyCastle, and add it to the installer project. When users install your application, BouncyCastle's dlls will be automatically copied to the installation directory and everything will be good.
You need to create installer. Best one to start with is ClickOnce. It will give you ability to put all needed files into one and provide UI for installation.
Second question. The default place to look for assemblies is GAC.