XAML in VS Shell: Loading an assembly without reference

Question

Hi,

I'm currently trying to customize a Visual Studio Isolated Shell so it opens a XAML file and its designer without a solution or a project. Therefore, for the designer to load, Visual Studio need to recognize every xaml tag in the XAML file or it won't load telling me that the document contains errors.

I'm currently trying to manually load an assembly from Telerik's control set (RadControls) without a reference since I need to use the designer without a solution/project.

Is it possible to manually load an assembly in XAML from a "custom" .dll like Telerik's without a VS project reference so the custom controls from the assembly are recognized by Visual Studio at design time (in order to use the WPF designer)?

Thanks!

SatixX

Answer 1

Hi,

maybe you can read the namespace references out and try to resolve the assemblies in GAC and/or any other location (think of standard paths .NET itselfs looks for assemblies). Then try to load them with reflection. Afterwards you then could try to load the XAML. But: if an assembly isn't found, you should throw an error and stop loading the XAML. Also, considering an appdomain might be well suited because you can unload it again.

-sa