How do I determine the dependencies of a NET application

Question

How do I determine the dependencies of a  NET application  Does Dependency Walker work with managed apps  I ve downloaded the latest and tried profiling the app  but it just exits without much of an explanation  If it doesn t work with  NET  then is there some other tool that would help me debug a run-time DLL loading issue

User · Answer

Best app that I see and use  show missed problematic dlls  http   www dependencywalker com

User · Answer

Dependency walker works on normal win32 binaries  All  NET dll s and exe s have a small stub header part which makes them look like normal binaries  but all it basically says is  load the CLR  - so that s all that dependency walker will tell you   To see which things your  NET app actually relies on  you can use the tremendously excellent  NET reflector from Red Gate   EDIT  Note that  NET Reflector is now a paid product  ILSpy is free and open source and very similar    Load your DLL into it  right click  and chose  Analyze  - you ll then see a  Depends On  item which will show you all the other dll s  and methods inside those dll s  that it needs   It can sometimes get trickier though  in that your app depends on X dll  and X dll is present  but for whatever reason can t be loaded or located at runtime   To troubleshoot those kinds of issues  Microsoft have an Assembly Binding Log Viewer which can show you what s going on at runtime

User · Answer

http   www amberfish net   ChkAsm will show you all the dependencies of a particular assembly at once  including the versions  and easily let you search for assemblies in the list  Works much better for this purpose than ILSpy  http   ilspy net    which is what I used to use for this task

User · Answer

I find the small utility AsmSpy an invaluable tool to for resolving issues with loading assemblies  It lists all assembly references of managed assemblies including assembly versions   Run it in a command prompt in the directory of the  dll with the following arguments   asmspy   all     Install it quickly with Chocolatey   choco install asmspy

User · Answer

If you are using the Mono toolchain  you can use the monodis utility with the --assemblyref argument to list the dependencies of a  NET assembly  This will work on both  exe and  dll files   Example usage   monodis --assemblyref somefile exe   Example output   exe      monodis --assemblyref monop exe AssemblyRef Table 1  Version 4 0 0 0     Name System     Flags 0x00000000     Public Key  0x00000000  B7 7A 5C 56 19 34 E0 89 2  Version 4 0 0 0     Name mscorlib     Flags 0x00000000     Public Key  0x00000000  B7 7A 5C 56 19 34 E0 89   Example output   dll      monodis --assemblyref Mono CSharp dll AssemblyRef Table 1  Version 4 0 0 0     Name mscorlib     Flags 0x00000000     Public Key  0x00000000  B7 7A 5C 56 19 34 E0 89 2  Version 4 0 0 0     Name System Core     Flags 0x00000000     Public Key  0x00000000  B7 7A 5C 56 19 34 E0 89 3  Version 4 0 0 0     Name System     Flags 0x00000000     Public Key  0x00000000  B7 7A 5C 56 19 34 E0 89 4  Version 4 0 0 0     Name System Xml     Flags 0x00000000     Public Key  0x00000000  B7 7A 5C 56 19 34 E0 89

User · Answer

It s funny I had a similar issue and didn t find anything suitable and was aware of good old Dependency Walker so in the end I wrote one myself   This deals with  NET specifically and will show what references an assembly has  and missing  recursively  It ll also show native library dependencies   It s free  for personal use  and available here for anyone interested  www netdepends com    Feedback welcome

User · Answer

Open the assembly file in ILDASM and look   the  assembly extern in the MANIFEST

User · Answer

Enable assembly binding logging set the registry value EnableLog in HKLM Software Microsoft Fusion to 1  Note that you have to restart your application  use iisreset  for the changes to have any effect   Tip  Remember to turn off fusion logging when you are done since there is a performance penalty to have it turned on

User · Answer

You don t need to download and install shareware apps or tools  You can do it programitically from  NET using Assembly GetReferencedAssemblies    Assembly LoadFile   app   GetReferencedAssemblies

User · Answer

Dependency walker works on normal win32 binaries  All  NET dll s and exe s have a small stub header part which makes them look like normal binaries  but all it basically says is  load the CLR  - so that s all that dependency walker will tell you   To see which things your  NET app actually relies on  you can use the tremendously excellent  NET reflector from Red Gate   EDIT  Note that  NET Reflector is now a paid product  ILSpy is free and open source and very similar    Load your DLL into it  right click  and chose  Analyze  - you ll then see a  Depends On  item which will show you all the other dll s  and methods inside those dll s  that it needs   It can sometimes get trickier though  in that your app depends on X dll  and X dll is present  but for whatever reason can t be loaded or located at runtime   To troubleshoot those kinds of issues  Microsoft have an Assembly Binding Log Viewer which can show you what s going on at runtime

User · Answer

To browse  NET code dependencies  you can use the capabilities of the tool NDepend  The tool proposes    a dependency graph  a dependency matrix  and also some C  LINQ queries can be edited  or generated  to browse dependencies     For example such query can look like   from m in Methods  let depth   m DepthOfIsUsing  NHibernate NHibernateUtil Entity Type     where depth   gt   0  amp  amp  m IsUsing  System IDisposable   orderby depth select new   m  depth     And its result looks like   notice the code metric depth  1 is for direct callers  2 for callers of direct callers      notice also the Export to Graph button to export the query result to a Call Graph     The dependency graph looks like     The dependency matrix looks like     The dependency matrix is de-facto less intuitive than the graph  but it is more suited to browse complex sections of code like     Disclaimer  I work for NDepend

User · Answer

Dependency walker works on normal win32 binaries  All  NET dll s and exe s have a small stub header part which makes them look like normal binaries  but all it basically says is  load the CLR  - so that s all that dependency walker will tell you   To see which things your  NET app actually relies on  you can use the tremendously excellent  NET reflector from Red Gate   EDIT  Note that  NET Reflector is now a paid product  ILSpy is free and open source and very similar    Load your DLL into it  right click  and chose  Analyze  - you ll then see a  Depends On  item which will show you all the other dll s  and methods inside those dll s  that it needs   It can sometimes get trickier though  in that your app depends on X dll  and X dll is present  but for whatever reason can t be loaded or located at runtime   To troubleshoot those kinds of issues  Microsoft have an Assembly Binding Log Viewer which can show you what s going on at runtime

User · Answer

Enable assembly binding logging set the registry value EnableLog in HKLM Software Microsoft Fusion to 1  Note that you have to restart your application  use iisreset  for the changes to have any effect   Tip  Remember to turn off fusion logging when you are done since there is a performance penalty to have it turned on

User · Answer

It s funny I had a similar issue and didn t find anything suitable and was aware of good old Dependency Walker so in the end I wrote one myself   This deals with  NET specifically and will show what references an assembly has  and missing  recursively  It ll also show native library dependencies   It s free  for personal use  and available here for anyone interested  www netdepends com    Feedback welcome

User · Answer

Another handy Reflector add-in that I use is the Dependency Structure Matrix   It s really great to see what classes use what   Plus it s free

User · Answer

Try compiling your  NET assembly with the option --staticlink  Namespace Assembly     This forces the compiler to pull in all the dependencies at compile time   If it comes across a dependency that s not referenced it will give a warning or error message usually with the name of that assembly   Namespace Assembly is the assembly you suspect as having the dependency problem   Typically just statically linking this assembly will reference all dependencies transitively

User · Answer

To browse  NET code dependencies  you can use the capabilities of the tool NDepend  The tool proposes    a dependency graph  a dependency matrix  and also some C  LINQ queries can be edited  or generated  to browse dependencies     For example such query can look like   from m in Methods  let depth   m DepthOfIsUsing  NHibernate NHibernateUtil Entity Type     where depth   gt   0  amp  amp  m IsUsing  System IDisposable   orderby depth select new   m  depth     And its result looks like   notice the code metric depth  1 is for direct callers  2 for callers of direct callers      notice also the Export to Graph button to export the query result to a Call Graph     The dependency graph looks like     The dependency matrix looks like     The dependency matrix is de-facto less intuitive than the graph  but it is more suited to browse complex sections of code like     Disclaimer  I work for NDepend

User · Answer

If you are using the Mono toolchain  you can use the monodis utility with the --assemblyref argument to list the dependencies of a  NET assembly  This will work on both  exe and  dll files   Example usage   monodis --assemblyref somefile exe   Example output   exe      monodis --assemblyref monop exe AssemblyRef Table 1  Version 4 0 0 0     Name System     Flags 0x00000000     Public Key  0x00000000  B7 7A 5C 56 19 34 E0 89 2  Version 4 0 0 0     Name mscorlib     Flags 0x00000000     Public Key  0x00000000  B7 7A 5C 56 19 34 E0 89   Example output   dll      monodis --assemblyref Mono CSharp dll AssemblyRef Table 1  Version 4 0 0 0     Name mscorlib     Flags 0x00000000     Public Key  0x00000000  B7 7A 5C 56 19 34 E0 89 2  Version 4 0 0 0     Name System Core     Flags 0x00000000     Public Key  0x00000000  B7 7A 5C 56 19 34 E0 89 3  Version 4 0 0 0     Name System     Flags 0x00000000     Public Key  0x00000000  B7 7A 5C 56 19 34 E0 89 4  Version 4 0 0 0     Name System Xml     Flags 0x00000000     Public Key  0x00000000  B7 7A 5C 56 19 34 E0 89

User · Answer

Enable assembly binding logging set the registry value EnableLog in HKLM Software Microsoft Fusion to 1  Note that you have to restart your application  use iisreset  for the changes to have any effect   Tip  Remember to turn off fusion logging when you are done since there is a performance penalty to have it turned on

User · Answer

Open the assembly file in ILDASM and look   the  assembly extern in the MANIFEST

User · Answer

I find the small utility AsmSpy an invaluable tool to for resolving issues with loading assemblies  It lists all assembly references of managed assemblies including assembly versions   Run it in a command prompt in the directory of the  dll with the following arguments   asmspy   all     Install it quickly with Chocolatey   choco install asmspy

User · Answer

Dependency walker works on normal win32 binaries  All  NET dll s and exe s have a small stub header part which makes them look like normal binaries  but all it basically says is  load the CLR  - so that s all that dependency walker will tell you   To see which things your  NET app actually relies on  you can use the tremendously excellent  NET reflector from Red Gate   EDIT  Note that  NET Reflector is now a paid product  ILSpy is free and open source and very similar    Load your DLL into it  right click  and chose  Analyze  - you ll then see a  Depends On  item which will show you all the other dll s  and methods inside those dll s  that it needs   It can sometimes get trickier though  in that your app depends on X dll  and X dll is present  but for whatever reason can t be loaded or located at runtime   To troubleshoot those kinds of issues  Microsoft have an Assembly Binding Log Viewer which can show you what s going on at runtime

User · Answer

http   www amberfish net   ChkAsm will show you all the dependencies of a particular assembly at once  including the versions  and easily let you search for assemblies in the list  Works much better for this purpose than ILSpy  http   ilspy net    which is what I used to use for this task

User · Answer

Try compiling your  NET assembly with the option --staticlink  Namespace Assembly     This forces the compiler to pull in all the dependencies at compile time   If it comes across a dependency that s not referenced it will give a warning or error message usually with the name of that assembly   Namespace Assembly is the assembly you suspect as having the dependency problem   Typically just statically linking this assembly will reference all dependencies transitively

User · Answer

To browse  NET code dependencies  you can use the capabilities of the tool NDepend  The tool proposes    a dependency graph  a dependency matrix  and also some C  LINQ queries can be edited  or generated  to browse dependencies     For example such query can look like   from m in Methods  let depth   m DepthOfIsUsing  NHibernate NHibernateUtil Entity Type     where depth   gt   0  amp  amp  m IsUsing  System IDisposable   orderby depth select new   m  depth     And its result looks like   notice the code metric depth  1 is for direct callers  2 for callers of direct callers      notice also the Export to Graph button to export the query result to a Call Graph     The dependency graph looks like     The dependency matrix looks like     The dependency matrix is de-facto less intuitive than the graph  but it is more suited to browse complex sections of code like     Disclaimer  I work for NDepend

User · Answer

Another handy Reflector add-in that I use is the Dependency Structure Matrix   It s really great to see what classes use what   Plus it s free

User · Answer

To browse  NET code dependencies  you can use the capabilities of the tool NDepend  The tool proposes    a dependency graph  a dependency matrix  and also some C  LINQ queries can be edited  or generated  to browse dependencies     For example such query can look like   from m in Methods  let depth   m DepthOfIsUsing  NHibernate NHibernateUtil Entity Type     where depth   gt   0  amp  amp  m IsUsing  System IDisposable   orderby depth select new   m  depth     And its result looks like   notice the code metric depth  1 is for direct callers  2 for callers of direct callers      notice also the Export to Graph button to export the query result to a Call Graph     The dependency graph looks like     The dependency matrix looks like     The dependency matrix is de-facto less intuitive than the graph  but it is more suited to browse complex sections of code like     Disclaimer  I work for NDepend

User · Answer

Enable assembly binding logging set the registry value EnableLog in HKLM Software Microsoft Fusion to 1  Note that you have to restart your application  use iisreset  for the changes to have any effect   Tip  Remember to turn off fusion logging when you are done since there is a performance penalty to have it turned on

User · Answer

You don t need to download and install shareware apps or tools  You can do it programitically from  NET using Assembly GetReferencedAssemblies    Assembly LoadFile   app   GetReferencedAssemblies

User · Answer

Best app that I see and use  show missed problematic dlls  http   www dependencywalker com

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