Indirect load of type fails in PowerShell

Question

When invoking

[System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager]::GetSection("MySection")

from within a PowerShell prompt, it throws an exception because the assembly containing the type represented by "MySection" in the app config is unable to be loaded. However, I have previously loaded the assembly containing that type, and I am even able to instantiate the type directly using 'new-object'.

How is the ConfigurationManager resolving types such that the assemblies already loaded into the PowerShell app domain are not visible to it?

Answer 1

How exactly did you load the assembly? Binding contexts matter:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/suzcook/archive/2003/09/19/loadfile-vs-loadfrom.aspx

-Oisin

Answer 2

Try changing the app_config_file location to a path to your own app config file that specifies a private probing path to the dir containing your DLL. See this SO post for more details. This works for connection string data but I'm not sure if it will work with a private probing path outside the app's base dir.