How do I force where an assembly is loaded from?

Question

I have developed a console utility that performs some operations against a server application. Due to the nature of the server app I'm working with, I need to execute this utility on the server.

The problem is that the utility is referencing a common DLL that has previously been deployed to the server's GAC. Since the common DLL's deployment, it has been updated and my utility relies on these updates. I am unable to update the DLL in the GAC due to company policy regarding deployment.

By default my utility will use the outdated DLL in the GAC. Is there a way I can force it to use the updated DLL (e.g. by specifying a path on the file system)?

Answer 1

You might want to take a look at the AppDomain.AssemblyResolve event.

EDIT: the event is only fired when regular assembly resolution fails, so it does not fit your needs.

Answer 2

The Assembly class has some methods to load assemblies from specific locations.

Assembly.LoadFrom has a few overloads

EDIT: There is a way to specify, via configuration file, where to look for specific assembly versions. I can't recall exactly.

Answer 3

Does the updated DLL not have a new version number? I would expect that if you force the reference to use the right version number, it should pick up the local one.

Answer 4

Unfortunately, GAC tends to play a trump card - but if you have changed the version, then the GAC resolve should fail (as long as you have "Specific Version" set to true in the IDE), allowing it to load the local version?

Answer 5

Try using a <codebase> element in the app.config