I will appreciate your help in this. I have spent many time in looking for a procedure or tool that can let me create a single DLL from other private dlls (I named private because these dlls are working under licensing). I already bought the lic but I dont like to see the vendors name in my apps (I'd prefer to see the dlls as MyDll.dll rather than Microsoft.dll)
I have used the Gilma and the ILMerger tool that Microsoft has in its website without results. So do you guys know how to create this dll?
Thanks,
Mark
Tools like ILMerge will merge managed assemblies. However, you may have problems doing this with 3rd party dlls as they will most likely be code-signed with a certificate and obfuscated to stop people tampering with them in any way.
Another approach would be to embed the 3rd party dlls as file Resources. You can then load them with Assembly.Load using a Stream created directly from your resources (GetManifestResourceStream), so the user will never see them as separate files on disk, but you won't actually be attempting to change their contents.
Related
I am trying to share my code's capabilities with another person, while obfuscating the actual code (via dll). However, my library depends on a (free) 3rd party piece of code that cannot be distributed in my package due to licensing, but both of us have - let's call it "sharedfile.cs"
Question: Is it possible for me to create a DLL of my code that depends on the existence of "sharedfile.cs", while not rolling that file into my dll?
If not... what options would be available? Both of us have "sharedfile.cs" but I do not want to expose my raw code by not creating a DLL.
Thanks a lot for any help!
Is there a way to keep any DLLs needed for my Visual C# program (such as SQLite) inside the actual EXE so it doesn't require the files to be present?
If not, can anyone show me how to make a wrapper for my program (independent of .NET, so maybe C++?) to copy/load required files to the working directory before starting the program itself.
What I intend to end up with is a single EXE file that can be deployed anywhere and set itself up like a transformer. All it requires is the following criteria:
SQLite is present
OpenHardwareMonitorLib is present
.NET 2.0 is installed (if not, offer install with redistributable package)
Microsoft provide a tool for merging DLLs. It's called ILMerge.
It doesn't always work, I believe certain things can cause problems. But it's definitely the easier option!
If the problem is redistribute only one file, you can create a "installer" exe, that unpack all your dependencies (from executable content).
If you don't want to leave all dlls in your production environment, you can merge all IL code in the main executable. you can use ILMerge (but it's not the only product that can do this)
You can merge the dependencies into the main executable. After your build completes you run an additional tool that combines the IL code into a single assembly.
ILMerge can do this but is a bit cumbersome to use.
Some (proprietary) tools can do this as well. I know of at least one obfuscator (DeepSea) that can do this. DeepSea also allows you to specify what you want to include and what types you want to expose from the resulting assembly.
Full disclosure: I know the guys that build DeepSea Obfuscator.
I guess you could embed the target assemblies as resources and then unpack them in some custom assembly resolution code?
Edit: there's an example of this here: Embedding assemblies inside another assembly
I have an application that makes use of/consumes services from a number of external .net libraries, which in turn calls certain executables. Would it be possible to integrate these into one huge executable and load them from my application to the disk as required? Resources come to mind but not sure how that is done.
Thanks,
You have several options to do that:
use ILMerge (free)
For howto see here and here
OR
use some tool like SmartAssembly (commercial)
it can embed and merge among other things (no need to change your source code)
OR
code that yourself in less than 10 lines (free but minimal source code change)
mark all needed dependencies as "embedded resource" - this way they are included in the EXE file... you need to setup an AssemblyResolve handler which at runtime reads from Resources and returns the needed DLLs to the .NET runtime...
You can use ILMerge to merge all your assemblies into a single executable file.
You can find a complete example at CodeProject.
There are a lot of posts on here about this, I'm using this code from another SO post and placing a delegate assignation in my Main() method. None of the other posts have directly answered my question.
I've got my third party assembly embedded as a resource but when I fire up the app:
I'm getting a TypeInitializationException with an inner of FileNotFoundException. It's trying to find the assembly on the file system and failing.
it's never getting to the Main method, where the event handler for AssemblyResolve is assigned
I have two assembly refs that are embedded in my Resources.resx, one is a third party tool (command line parser) and the other is a Library file where the meat of the application resides.
Maybe this isn't possible with a console app? Seems unlikely but I don't see a way around it.
Re: ILMerge etc: I'd like to get this done entirely in code without involving any tools. Reason: I don't want to have source code in the repository that requires other team members to install a tool that they probably don't have already. If that's not possible then ILMerge looks like the next best option.
Consider using ILMerge to merge the assemlies into one rather than embedding as a resource. This is download site for ILMerge.
You would merge your third party assemblies into your console app.
You could also look at application virtualization tools like XenoCode. They can package multiple assemblies (including the .net framework itself) into a stand alone executable.
If it is mixed mode assembly, it has to reside on the disk. Some limitation or something.
I'm working on a module for a CMS. This module is distributed as a class library DLL.
I have several utility libraries I'd like to use in this module. Is there anyway I can link these libraries statically so I won't have to distribute several DLL's (thereby distributing my utility libraries separately)?
I would like to have only one DLL.
You can merge your many DLLs with ILMERGE:
http://research.microsoft.com/~mbarnett/ILMerge.aspx
Haven't tried it myself. Hope it helps.
Download here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=22914587-B4AD-4EAE-87CF-B14AE6A939B0&displaylang=en
Brief Description (from download-page)
ILMerge is a utility for merging multiple .NET assemblies into a single .NET assembly. It works on executables and DLLs alike and comes with several options for controlling the processing and format of the output. See the accompanying documentation for details.
If you don't want to use ILMerge, see this page:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2010/02/03/jeffrey-richter-excerpt-2-from-clr-via-c-third-edition.aspx
editor's note: Jeffrey Richter advices to put your dlls into exe file as resources (For each DLL file you add, display its properties and change its “Build Action” to “Embedded Resource.”). Then a custom class loader is needed to make the executable work (At runtime, the CLR won’t be able to find the dependent DLL assemblies, which is a problem. To fix this, when your application initializes, register a callback method with the AppDomain’s ResolveAssembly event).
Be sure to change the resourceName string to point to your actual resources. (e.g. change AssemblyLoadingAndReflection to your project name.)
The short answer for this is no!
You can not link in a dll during compilation.
I don't know if there is some subtle way to do this, but you would probably have to distribute the dlls along with your cms.
The best way to do this is to make some kind of re-distributable.