Suggestions needed on most efficient way to retrieve an assembly version from an external assembly.

Question

I need to iterate a list of assemblies and determine their version numbers. I've made use of System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().Version before, but in this case I'm working with assemblies that have not yet been loaded. I understand I can use System.Reflection.Assembly.ReflectionOnlyLoadFrom("assembly.dll") but I've read that this can eat memory unless I load the assemblies in their own application domain and then unload them. Is this true of ReflectionOnlyLoadFrom() or just LoadFrom()?

Alternatively, is there a way of obtaining the version info without loading the assembly?

Answer 1

You could use the Cecil-library of the Mono-project.

Answer 2

I think their are no way to get assembly version without loading it.

Answer 3

Take a look at System.Reflection.AssemblyName. You can do

AssemblyName.GetAssemblyName("foo.dll").Version

which returns System.Version object where you can get major, minor, minor revison, and revision information. According to the Msdn article on GetAssemblyName method:

This will work if the file contains an assembly manifest. This method causes the file to be opened and closed, but the assembly is not added to this domain.