Embedding DLLs in a compiled executable

Question

Is it possible to embed a pre-existing DLL into a compiled C  executable  so that you only have one file to distribute   If it is possible  how would one go about doing it   Normally  I m cool with just leaving the DLLs outside and having the setup program handle everything  but there have been a couple of people at work who have asked me this and I honestly don t know

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If they re actually managed assemblies  you can use ILMerge  For native DLLs  you ll have a bit more work to do    See also  How can a C   windows dll be merged into a C  application exe

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Yes  it is possible to merge  NET executables with libraries  There are multiple tools available to get the job done    ILMerge is a utility that can be used to merge multiple  NET assemblies into a single assembly  Mono mkbundle  packages an exe and all assemblies with libmono into a single binary package  IL-Repack is a FLOSS alterantive to ILMerge  with some additional features    In addition this can be combined with the Mono Linker  which does remove unused code and therefor makes the resulting assembly smaller   Another possibility is to use  NETZ  which does not only allow compressing of an assembly  but also can pack the dlls straight into the exe  The difference to the above mentioned solutions is that  NETZ does not merge them  they stay separate assemblies but are packed into one package       NETZ is a open source tool that compresses and packs the Microsoft  NET Framework executable  EXE  DLL  files in order to make them smaller

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You could add the DLLs as embedded resources  and then have your program unpack them into the application directory on startup  after checking to see if they re there already    Setup files are so easy to make  though  that I don t think this would be worth it   EDIT   This technique would be easy with  NET assemblies   With non- NET DLLs it would be a lot more work  you d have to figure out where to unpack the files and register them and so on

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Another product that can handle this elegantly is SmartAssembly  at SmartAssembly com  This product will  in addition to merging all dependencies into a single DLL    optionally  obfuscate your code  remove extra meta-data to reduce the resulting file size  and can also actually optimize the IL to increase runtime performance    There is also some kind of global exception handling reporting feature it adds to your software  if desired  that could be useful  I believe it also has a command-line API so you can make it part of your build process

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It may sound simplistic  but WinRar gives the option to compress a bunch of files to a self-extracting executable  It has lots of configurable options  final icon  extract files to given path  file to execute after extraction  custom logo texts for popup shown during extraction  no popup window at all  license agreement text  etc  May be useful in some cases

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ILMerge can combine assemblies to one single assembly provided the assembly has only managed code  You can use the commandline app  or add reference to the exe and programmatically merge  For a GUI version there is Eazfuscator  and also  Netz both of which are free  Paid apps include BoxedApp and SmartAssembly    If you have to merge assemblies with unmanaged code  I would suggest SmartAssembly  I never had hiccups with SmartAssembly but with all others  Here  it can embed the required dependencies as resources to your main exe   You can do all this manually not needing to worry if assembly is managed or in mixed mode by embedding dll to your resources and then relying on AppDomain s Assembly ResolveHandler  This is a one stop solution by adopting the worst case  ie assemblies with unmanaged code   static void Main         AppDomain CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve     sender  args    gt                string assemblyName   new AssemblyName args Name  Name          if  assemblyName EndsWith   resources                return null           string dllName   assemblyName     dll           string dllFullPath   Path Combine GetMyApplicationSpecificPath    dllName            using  Stream s   Assembly GetEntryAssembly   GetManifestResourceStream typeof Program  Namespace     Resources     dllName                         byte   data   new byte stream Length               s Read data  0  data Length                  or just byte   data   new BinaryReader s  ReadBytes  int s Length                File WriteAllBytes dllFullPath  data                      return Assembly LoadFrom dllFullPath              The key here is to write the bytes to a file and load from its location  To avoid chicken and egg problem  you have to ensure you declare the handler before accessing assembly and that you do not access the assembly members  or instantiate anything that has to deal with the assembly  inside the loading  assembly resolving  part  Also take care to ensure GetMyApplicationSpecificPath   is not any temp directory since temp files could be attempted to get erased by other programs or by yourself  not that it will get deleted while your program is accessing the dll  but at least its a nuisance  AppData is good location   Also note that you have to write the bytes each time  you cant load from location just  cos the dll already resides there   For managed dlls  you need not write bytes  but directly load from the location of the dll  or just read the bytes and load the assembly from memory  Like this or so       using  Stream s   Assembly GetEntryAssembly   GetManifestResourceStream typeof Program  Namespace     Resources     dllName                 byte   data   new byte stream Length           s Read data  0  data Length           return Assembly Load data                or just      return Assembly LoadFrom dllFullPath     if location is known    If the assembly is fully unmanaged  you can see this link or this as to how to load such dlls

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Neither the ILMerge approach nor Lars Holm Jensen s handling the AssemblyResolve event will work for a plugin host  Say executable H loads assembly P dynamically and accesses it via interface IP defined in an separate assembly  To embed IP into H one shall need a little modification to Lars s code   Dictionary lt string  Assembly gt  loaded   new Dictionary lt string Assembly gt     AppDomain CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve     sender  args    gt      Assembly resAssembly      string dllName   args Name Contains        args Name Substring 0  args Name IndexOf         args Name Replace   dll           dllName   dllName Replace                if    loaded ContainsKey  dllName             if  dllName EndsWith   resources    return null          System Resources ResourceManager rm   new System Resources ResourceManager GetType   Namespace     Properties Resources   System Reflection Assembly GetExecutingAssembly             byte   bytes    byte   rm GetObject dllName           resAssembly   System Reflection Assembly Load bytes           loaded Add dllName  resAssembly             else         resAssembly   loaded dllName          return resAssembly         The trick to handle repeated attempts to resolve the same assembly and return the existing one instead of creating a new instance   EDIT  Lest it spoil  NET s serialization  make sure to return null for all assemblies not embedded in yours  thereby defaulting to the standard behaviour   You can get a list of these libraries by   static HashSet lt string gt  IncludedAssemblies   new HashSet lt string gt     string   resources   System Reflection Assembly GetExecutingAssembly   GetManifestResourceNames    for int i   0  i  lt  resources Length  i        IncludedAssemblies Add resources i         and just return null if the passed assembly does not belong to IncludedAssemblies

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Neither the ILMerge approach nor Lars Holm Jensen s handling the AssemblyResolve event will work for a plugin host  Say executable H loads assembly P dynamically and accesses it via interface IP defined in an separate assembly  To embed IP into H one shall need a little modification to Lars s code   Dictionary lt string  Assembly gt  loaded   new Dictionary lt string Assembly gt     AppDomain CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve     sender  args    gt      Assembly resAssembly      string dllName   args Name Contains        args Name Substring 0  args Name IndexOf         args Name Replace   dll           dllName   dllName Replace                if    loaded ContainsKey  dllName             if  dllName EndsWith   resources    return null          System Resources ResourceManager rm   new System Resources ResourceManager GetType   Namespace     Properties Resources   System Reflection Assembly GetExecutingAssembly             byte   bytes    byte   rm GetObject dllName           resAssembly   System Reflection Assembly Load bytes           loaded Add dllName  resAssembly             else         resAssembly   loaded dllName          return resAssembly         The trick to handle repeated attempts to resolve the same assembly and return the existing one instead of creating a new instance   EDIT  Lest it spoil  NET s serialization  make sure to return null for all assemblies not embedded in yours  thereby defaulting to the standard behaviour   You can get a list of these libraries by   static HashSet lt string gt  IncludedAssemblies   new HashSet lt string gt     string   resources   System Reflection Assembly GetExecutingAssembly   GetManifestResourceNames    for int i   0  i  lt  resources Length  i        IncludedAssemblies Add resources i         and just return null if the passed assembly does not belong to IncludedAssemblies

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Generally you would need some form of post build tool to perform an assembly merge like you are describing   There is a free tool called Eazfuscator  eazfuscator blogspot com   which is designed for bytecode mangling that also handles assembly merging   You can add this into a post build command line with Visual Studio to merge your assemblies  but your mileage will vary due to issues that will arise in any non trival assembly merging scenarios   You could also check to see if the build make untility NANT has the ability to merge assemblies after building  but I am not familiar enough with NANT myself to say whether the functionality is built in or not   There are also many many Visual Studio plugins that will perform assembly merging as part of building the application   Alternatively if you don t need this to be done automatically  there are a number of tools like ILMerge that will merge  net assemblies into a single file   The biggest issue I ve had with merging assemblies is if they use any similar namespaces   Or worse  reference different versions of the same dll  my problems were generally with the NUnit dll files

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NET Core 3 0 natively supports compiling to a single  exe  The feature is enabled by the usage of the following property in your project file   csproj         lt PropertyGroup gt           lt PublishSingleFile gt true lt  PublishSingleFile gt       lt  PropertyGroup gt    This is done without any external tool    See my answer for this question for further details

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The excerpt by Jeffrey Richter is very good  In short  add the library s as embedded resources and add a callback before anything else  Here is a version of the code  found in the comments of his page  that I put at the start of Main method for a console app  just make sure that any calls that use the library s are in a different method to Main    AppDomain CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve     sender  bargs    gt                        String dllName   new AssemblyName bargs Name  Name     dll               var assem   Assembly GetExecutingAssembly                String resourceName   assem GetManifestResourceNames   FirstOrDefault rn   gt  rn EndsWith dllName                if  resourceName    null  return null     Not found  maybe another handler will find it             using  var stream   assem GetManifestResourceStream resourceName                                 Byte   assemblyData   new Byte stream Length                   stream Read assemblyData  0  assemblyData Length                   return Assembly Load assemblyData

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Just right-click your project in Visual Studio  choose Project Properties -  Resources -  Add Resource -  Add Existing File    And include the code below to your App xaml cs or equivalent   public App         AppDomain CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve   new ResolveEventHandler CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve      System Reflection Assembly CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve object sender  ResolveEventArgs args        string dllName   args Name Contains        args Name Substring 0  args Name IndexOf         args Name Replace   dll            dllName   dllName Replace                 if  dllName EndsWith   resources    return null       System Resources ResourceManager rm   new System Resources ResourceManager GetType   Namespace     Properties Resources   System Reflection Assembly GetExecutingAssembly          byte   bytes    byte   rm GetObject dllName        return System Reflection Assembly Load bytes       Here s my original blog post  http   codeblog larsholm net 2011 06 embed-dlls-easily-in-a-net-assembly

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Generally you would need some form of post build tool to perform an assembly merge like you are describing   There is a free tool called Eazfuscator  eazfuscator blogspot com   which is designed for bytecode mangling that also handles assembly merging   You can add this into a post build command line with Visual Studio to merge your assemblies  but your mileage will vary due to issues that will arise in any non trival assembly merging scenarios   You could also check to see if the build make untility NANT has the ability to merge assemblies after building  but I am not familiar enough with NANT myself to say whether the functionality is built in or not   There are also many many Visual Studio plugins that will perform assembly merging as part of building the application   Alternatively if you don t need this to be done automatically  there are a number of tools like ILMerge that will merge  net assemblies into a single file   The biggest issue I ve had with merging assemblies is if they use any similar namespaces   Or worse  reference different versions of the same dll  my problems were generally with the NUnit dll files

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I use the csc exe compiler called from a  vbs script   In your xyz cs script  add the following lines after the directives  my example is for the Renci SSH    using System  using Renci   FOR THE SSH using System Net   FOR THE ADDRESS TRANSLATION using System Reflection   FOR THE Assembly     ref gt  C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft ILMerge Renci SshNet dll     res gt  C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft ILMerge Renci SshNet dll     ico gt  C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft CAPICOM 2 1 0 2 SDK Samples c sharp xmldsig resources Traffic ico    The ref  res and ico tags will be picked up by the  vbs script below to form the csc command   Then add the assembly resolver caller in the Main   public static void Main string   args        AppDomain CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve    new ResolveEventHandler CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve              and add the resolver itself somewhere in the class        static Assembly CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve object sender  ResolveEventArgs args                String resourceName   new AssemblyName args Name  Name     dll            using  var stream   Assembly GetExecutingAssembly   GetManifestResourceStream resourceName                         Byte   assemblyData   new Byte stream Length               stream Read assemblyData  0  assemblyData Length               return Assembly Load assemblyData                      I name the vbs script to match the  cs filename  e g  ssh vbs looks for ssh cs   this makes running the script numerous times a lot easier  but if you aren t an idiot like me then a generic script could pick up the target  cs file from a drag-and-drop        Dim name  oShell fso     Set oShell   CreateObject  Shell Application       Set fso   CreateObject  Scripting fileSystemObject         TAKE THE VBS SCRIPT NAME AS THE TARGET FILE NAME                                                           name    Split wscript ScriptName       0        GET THE EXTERNAL DLL s AND ICON NAMES FROM THE  CS FILE                                                                  Const OPEN FILE FOR READING   1     Set objInputFile   fso OpenTextFile name      cs   1        READ EVERYTHING INTO AN ARRAY                                        inputData   Split objInputFile ReadAll  vbNewline       For each strData In inputData          if left strData 7      ref   then              csc references   csc references      reference             trim replace strData     ref                      end if          if left strData 7      res   then              csc resources   csc resources      resource     trim replace strData     res                      end if          if left strData 7      ico   then              csc icon      win32icon     trim replace strData     ico                      end if     Next      objInputFile Close        COMPILE THE FILE                           oShell ShellExecute  c  windows microsoft net framework v3 5 csc exe     warn 1  target exe     csc references   csc resources   csc icon         name      cs        runas   2       WScript Quit 0

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Just right-click your project in Visual Studio  choose Project Properties -  Resources -  Add Resource -  Add Existing File    And include the code below to your App xaml cs or equivalent   public App         AppDomain CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve   new ResolveEventHandler CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve      System Reflection Assembly CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve object sender  ResolveEventArgs args        string dllName   args Name Contains        args Name Substring 0  args Name IndexOf         args Name Replace   dll            dllName   dllName Replace                 if  dllName EndsWith   resources    return null       System Resources ResourceManager rm   new System Resources ResourceManager GetType   Namespace     Properties Resources   System Reflection Assembly GetExecutingAssembly          byte   bytes    byte   rm GetObject dllName        return System Reflection Assembly Load bytes       Here s my original blog post  http   codeblog larsholm net 2011 06 embed-dlls-easily-in-a-net-assembly

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The following method DO NOT use external tools and AUTOMATICALLY include all needed DLL  no manual action required  everything done at compilation  I read a lot of answer here saying to use ILMerge  ILRepack or Jeffrey Ritcher method but none of that worked with WPF applications nor was easy to use  When you have a lot of DLL it can be hard to manually include the one you need in your exe  The best method i found was explained by Wegged here on StackOverflow Copy pasted his answer here for clarity  all credit to Wegged   1  Add this to your  csproj file   lt Target Name  quot AfterResolveReferences quot  gt     lt ItemGroup gt       lt EmbeddedResource Include  quot   ReferenceCopyLocalPaths  quot  Condition  quot    ReferenceCopyLocalPaths Extension        dll  quot  gt         lt LogicalName gt   ReferenceCopyLocalPaths DestinationSubDirectory   ReferenceCopyLocalPaths Filename   ReferenceCopyLocalPaths Extension  lt  LogicalName gt       lt  EmbeddedResource gt     lt  ItemGroup gt   lt  Target gt   2  Make your Main Program cs look like this   STAThreadAttribute  public static void Main         AppDomain CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve    OnResolveAssembly      App Main       3  Add the OnResolveAssembly method  private static Assembly OnResolveAssembly object sender  ResolveEventArgs args        Assembly executingAssembly   Assembly GetExecutingAssembly        AssemblyName assemblyName   new AssemblyName args Name        var path   assemblyName Name    quot  dll quot       if  assemblyName CultureInfo Equals CultureInfo InvariantCulture     false  path   String Format   quot  0   1  quot   assemblyName CultureInfo  path        using  Stream stream   executingAssembly GetManifestResourceStream path                 if  stream    null  return null           var assemblyRawBytes   new byte stream Length           stream Read assemblyRawBytes  0  assemblyRawBytes Length           return Assembly Load assemblyRawBytes

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I use the csc exe compiler called from a  vbs script   In your xyz cs script  add the following lines after the directives  my example is for the Renci SSH    using System  using Renci   FOR THE SSH using System Net   FOR THE ADDRESS TRANSLATION using System Reflection   FOR THE Assembly     ref gt  C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft ILMerge Renci SshNet dll     res gt  C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft ILMerge Renci SshNet dll     ico gt  C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft CAPICOM 2 1 0 2 SDK Samples c sharp xmldsig resources Traffic ico    The ref  res and ico tags will be picked up by the  vbs script below to form the csc command   Then add the assembly resolver caller in the Main   public static void Main string   args        AppDomain CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve    new ResolveEventHandler CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve              and add the resolver itself somewhere in the class        static Assembly CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve object sender  ResolveEventArgs args                String resourceName   new AssemblyName args Name  Name     dll            using  var stream   Assembly GetExecutingAssembly   GetManifestResourceStream resourceName                         Byte   assemblyData   new Byte stream Length               stream Read assemblyData  0  assemblyData Length               return Assembly Load assemblyData                      I name the vbs script to match the  cs filename  e g  ssh vbs looks for ssh cs   this makes running the script numerous times a lot easier  but if you aren t an idiot like me then a generic script could pick up the target  cs file from a drag-and-drop        Dim name  oShell fso     Set oShell   CreateObject  Shell Application       Set fso   CreateObject  Scripting fileSystemObject         TAKE THE VBS SCRIPT NAME AS THE TARGET FILE NAME                                                           name    Split wscript ScriptName       0        GET THE EXTERNAL DLL s AND ICON NAMES FROM THE  CS FILE                                                                  Const OPEN FILE FOR READING   1     Set objInputFile   fso OpenTextFile name      cs   1        READ EVERYTHING INTO AN ARRAY                                        inputData   Split objInputFile ReadAll  vbNewline       For each strData In inputData          if left strData 7      ref   then              csc references   csc references      reference             trim replace strData     ref                      end if          if left strData 7      res   then              csc resources   csc resources      resource     trim replace strData     res                      end if          if left strData 7      ico   then              csc icon      win32icon     trim replace strData     ico                      end if     Next      objInputFile Close        COMPILE THE FILE                           oShell ShellExecute  c  windows microsoft net framework v3 5 csc exe     warn 1  target exe     csc references   csc resources   csc icon         name      cs        runas   2       WScript Quit 0

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The excerpt by Jeffrey Richter is very good  In short  add the library s as embedded resources and add a callback before anything else  Here is a version of the code  found in the comments of his page  that I put at the start of Main method for a console app  just make sure that any calls that use the library s are in a different method to Main    AppDomain CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve     sender  bargs    gt                        String dllName   new AssemblyName bargs Name  Name     dll               var assem   Assembly GetExecutingAssembly                String resourceName   assem GetManifestResourceNames   FirstOrDefault rn   gt  rn EndsWith dllName                if  resourceName    null  return null     Not found  maybe another handler will find it             using  var stream   assem GetManifestResourceStream resourceName                                 Byte   assemblyData   new Byte stream Length                   stream Read assemblyData  0  assemblyData Length                   return Assembly Load assemblyData

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If they re actually managed assemblies  you can use ILMerge  For native DLLs  you ll have a bit more work to do    See also  How can a C   windows dll be merged into a C  application exe

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It s possible but not all that easy  to create a hybrid native managed assembly in C   Were you using C   instead it d be a lot easier  as the Visual C   compiler can create hybrid assemblies as easily as anything else   Unless you have a strict requirement to produce a hybrid assembly  I d agree with MusiGenesis that this isn t really worth the trouble to do with C   If you need to do it  perhaps look at moving to C   CLI instead

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It s possible but not all that easy  to create a hybrid native managed assembly in C   Were you using C   instead it d be a lot easier  as the Visual C   compiler can create hybrid assemblies as easily as anything else   Unless you have a strict requirement to produce a hybrid assembly  I d agree with MusiGenesis that this isn t really worth the trouble to do with C   If you need to do it  perhaps look at moving to C   CLI instead

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NET Core 3 0 natively supports compiling to a single  exe  The feature is enabled by the usage of the following property in your project file   csproj         lt PropertyGroup gt           lt PublishSingleFile gt true lt  PublishSingleFile gt       lt  PropertyGroup gt    This is done without any external tool    See my answer for this question for further details

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If they re actually managed assemblies  you can use ILMerge  For native DLLs  you ll have a bit more work to do    See also  How can a C   windows dll be merged into a C  application exe

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The following method DO NOT use external tools and AUTOMATICALLY include all needed DLL  no manual action required  everything done at compilation  I read a lot of answer here saying to use ILMerge  ILRepack or Jeffrey Ritcher method but none of that worked with WPF applications nor was easy to use  When you have a lot of DLL it can be hard to manually include the one you need in your exe  The best method i found was explained by Wegged here on StackOverflow Copy pasted his answer here for clarity  all credit to Wegged   1  Add this to your  csproj file   lt Target Name  quot AfterResolveReferences quot  gt     lt ItemGroup gt       lt EmbeddedResource Include  quot   ReferenceCopyLocalPaths  quot  Condition  quot    ReferenceCopyLocalPaths Extension        dll  quot  gt         lt LogicalName gt   ReferenceCopyLocalPaths DestinationSubDirectory   ReferenceCopyLocalPaths Filename   ReferenceCopyLocalPaths Extension  lt  LogicalName gt       lt  EmbeddedResource gt     lt  ItemGroup gt   lt  Target gt   2  Make your Main Program cs look like this   STAThreadAttribute  public static void Main         AppDomain CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve    OnResolveAssembly      App Main       3  Add the OnResolveAssembly method  private static Assembly OnResolveAssembly object sender  ResolveEventArgs args        Assembly executingAssembly   Assembly GetExecutingAssembly        AssemblyName assemblyName   new AssemblyName args Name        var path   assemblyName Name    quot  dll quot       if  assemblyName CultureInfo Equals CultureInfo InvariantCulture     false  path   String Format   quot  0   1  quot   assemblyName CultureInfo  path        using  Stream stream   executingAssembly GetManifestResourceStream path                 if  stream    null  return null           var assemblyRawBytes   new byte stream Length           stream Read assemblyRawBytes  0  assemblyRawBytes Length           return Assembly Load assemblyRawBytes

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Another product that can handle this elegantly is SmartAssembly  at SmartAssembly com  This product will  in addition to merging all dependencies into a single DLL    optionally  obfuscate your code  remove extra meta-data to reduce the resulting file size  and can also actually optimize the IL to increase runtime performance    There is also some kind of global exception handling reporting feature it adds to your software  if desired  that could be useful  I believe it also has a command-line API so you can make it part of your build process

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If they re actually managed assemblies  you can use ILMerge  For native DLLs  you ll have a bit more work to do    See also  How can a C   windows dll be merged into a C  application exe

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Another product that can handle this elegantly is SmartAssembly  at SmartAssembly com  This product will  in addition to merging all dependencies into a single DLL    optionally  obfuscate your code  remove extra meta-data to reduce the resulting file size  and can also actually optimize the IL to increase runtime performance    There is also some kind of global exception handling reporting feature it adds to your software  if desired  that could be useful  I believe it also has a command-line API so you can make it part of your build process

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To expand on  Bobby s asnwer above   You can edit your  csproj to use IL-Repack to automatically package all files into a single assembly when you build    Install the nuget ILRepack MSBuild Task package with Install-Package ILRepack MSBuild Task Edit the AfterBuild section of your  csproj   Here is a simple sample that merges ExampleAssemblyToMerge dll into your project output    lt  -- ILRepack -- gt   lt Target Name  AfterBuild  Condition     Configuration       Release   gt       lt ItemGroup gt       lt InputAssemblies Include    OutputPath    AssemblyName  exe    gt       lt InputAssemblies Include    OutputPath  ExampleAssemblyToMerge dll    gt      lt  ItemGroup gt       lt ILRepack      Parallel  true      Internalize  true      InputAssemblies    InputAssemblies       TargetKind  Exe      OutputFile    OutputPath    AssemblyName  exe       gt   lt  Target gt

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To expand on  Bobby s asnwer above   You can edit your  csproj to use IL-Repack to automatically package all files into a single assembly when you build    Install the nuget ILRepack MSBuild Task package with Install-Package ILRepack MSBuild Task Edit the AfterBuild section of your  csproj   Here is a simple sample that merges ExampleAssemblyToMerge dll into your project output    lt  -- ILRepack -- gt   lt Target Name  AfterBuild  Condition     Configuration       Release   gt       lt ItemGroup gt       lt InputAssemblies Include    OutputPath    AssemblyName  exe    gt       lt InputAssemblies Include    OutputPath  ExampleAssemblyToMerge dll    gt      lt  ItemGroup gt       lt ILRepack      Parallel  true      Internalize  true      InputAssemblies    InputAssemblies       TargetKind  Exe      OutputFile    OutputPath    AssemblyName  exe       gt   lt  Target gt

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You could add the DLLs as embedded resources  and then have your program unpack them into the application directory on startup  after checking to see if they re there already    Setup files are so easy to make  though  that I don t think this would be worth it   EDIT   This technique would be easy with  NET assemblies   With non- NET DLLs it would be a lot more work  you d have to figure out where to unpack the files and register them and so on

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You could add the DLLs as embedded resources  and then have your program unpack them into the application directory on startup  after checking to see if they re there already    Setup files are so easy to make  though  that I don t think this would be worth it   EDIT   This technique would be easy with  NET assemblies   With non- NET DLLs it would be a lot more work  you d have to figure out where to unpack the files and register them and so on

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I highly recommend to use Costura Fody - by far the best and easiest way to embed resources in your assembly  It s available as NuGet package   Install-Package Costura Fody   After adding it to the project  it will automatically embed all references that are copied to the output directory into your main assembly  You might want to clean the embedded files by adding a target to your project   Install-CleanReferencesTarget   You ll also be able to specify whether to include the pdb s  exclude certain assemblies  or extracting the assemblies on the fly  As far as I know  also unmanaged assemblies are supported   Update  Currently  some people are trying to add support for DNX   Update 2  For the lastest Fody version  you will need to have MSBuild 16  so Visual Studio 2019   Fody version 4 2 1 will do MSBuild 15   reference  Fody is only supported on MSBuild 16 and above  Current version  15

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It s possible but not all that easy  to create a hybrid native managed assembly in C   Were you using C   instead it d be a lot easier  as the Visual C   compiler can create hybrid assemblies as easily as anything else   Unless you have a strict requirement to produce a hybrid assembly  I d agree with MusiGenesis that this isn t really worth the trouble to do with C   If you need to do it  perhaps look at moving to C   CLI instead

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Yes  it is possible to merge  NET executables with libraries  There are multiple tools available to get the job done    ILMerge is a utility that can be used to merge multiple  NET assemblies into a single assembly  Mono mkbundle  packages an exe and all assemblies with libmono into a single binary package  IL-Repack is a FLOSS alterantive to ILMerge  with some additional features    In addition this can be combined with the Mono Linker  which does remove unused code and therefor makes the resulting assembly smaller   Another possibility is to use  NETZ  which does not only allow compressing of an assembly  but also can pack the dlls straight into the exe  The difference to the above mentioned solutions is that  NETZ does not merge them  they stay separate assemblies but are packed into one package       NETZ is a open source tool that compresses and packs the Microsoft  NET Framework executable  EXE  DLL  files in order to make them smaller

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It may sound simplistic  but WinRar gives the option to compress a bunch of files to a self-extracting executable  It has lots of configurable options  final icon  extract files to given path  file to execute after extraction  custom logo texts for popup shown during extraction  no popup window at all  license agreement text  etc  May be useful in some cases

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ILMerge can combine assemblies to one single assembly provided the assembly has only managed code  You can use the commandline app  or add reference to the exe and programmatically merge  For a GUI version there is Eazfuscator  and also  Netz both of which are free  Paid apps include BoxedApp and SmartAssembly    If you have to merge assemblies with unmanaged code  I would suggest SmartAssembly  I never had hiccups with SmartAssembly but with all others  Here  it can embed the required dependencies as resources to your main exe   You can do all this manually not needing to worry if assembly is managed or in mixed mode by embedding dll to your resources and then relying on AppDomain s Assembly ResolveHandler  This is a one stop solution by adopting the worst case  ie assemblies with unmanaged code   static void Main         AppDomain CurrentDomain AssemblyResolve     sender  args    gt                string assemblyName   new AssemblyName args Name  Name          if  assemblyName EndsWith   resources                return null           string dllName   assemblyName     dll           string dllFullPath   Path Combine GetMyApplicationSpecificPath    dllName            using  Stream s   Assembly GetEntryAssembly   GetManifestResourceStream typeof Program  Namespace     Resources     dllName                         byte   data   new byte stream Length               s Read data  0  data Length                  or just byte   data   new BinaryReader s  ReadBytes  int s Length                File WriteAllBytes dllFullPath  data                      return Assembly LoadFrom dllFullPath              The key here is to write the bytes to a file and load from its location  To avoid chicken and egg problem  you have to ensure you declare the handler before accessing assembly and that you do not access the assembly members  or instantiate anything that has to deal with the assembly  inside the loading  assembly resolving  part  Also take care to ensure GetMyApplicationSpecificPath   is not any temp directory since temp files could be attempted to get erased by other programs or by yourself  not that it will get deleted while your program is accessing the dll  but at least its a nuisance  AppData is good location   Also note that you have to write the bytes each time  you cant load from location just  cos the dll already resides there   For managed dlls  you need not write bytes  but directly load from the location of the dll  or just read the bytes and load the assembly from memory  Like this or so       using  Stream s   Assembly GetEntryAssembly   GetManifestResourceStream typeof Program  Namespace     Resources     dllName                 byte   data   new byte stream Length           s Read data  0  data Length           return Assembly Load data                or just      return Assembly LoadFrom dllFullPath     if location is known    If the assembly is fully unmanaged  you can see this link or this as to how to load such dlls

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It s possible but not all that easy  to create a hybrid native managed assembly in C   Were you using C   instead it d be a lot easier  as the Visual C   compiler can create hybrid assemblies as easily as anything else   Unless you have a strict requirement to produce a hybrid assembly  I d agree with MusiGenesis that this isn t really worth the trouble to do with C   If you need to do it  perhaps look at moving to C   CLI instead

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I highly recommend to use Costura Fody - by far the best and easiest way to embed resources in your assembly  It s available as NuGet package   Install-Package Costura Fody   After adding it to the project  it will automatically embed all references that are copied to the output directory into your main assembly  You might want to clean the embedded files by adding a target to your project   Install-CleanReferencesTarget   You ll also be able to specify whether to include the pdb s  exclude certain assemblies  or extracting the assemblies on the fly  As far as I know  also unmanaged assemblies are supported   Update  Currently  some people are trying to add support for DNX   Update 2  For the lastest Fody version  you will need to have MSBuild 16  so Visual Studio 2019   Fody version 4 2 1 will do MSBuild 15   reference  Fody is only supported on MSBuild 16 and above  Current version  15

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You could add the DLLs as embedded resources  and then have your program unpack them into the application directory on startup  after checking to see if they re there already    Setup files are so easy to make  though  that I don t think this would be worth it   EDIT   This technique would be easy with  NET assemblies   With non- NET DLLs it would be a lot more work  you d have to figure out where to unpack the files and register them and so on

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Another product that can handle this elegantly is SmartAssembly  at SmartAssembly com  This product will  in addition to merging all dependencies into a single DLL    optionally  obfuscate your code  remove extra meta-data to reduce the resulting file size  and can also actually optimize the IL to increase runtime performance    There is also some kind of global exception handling reporting feature it adds to your software  if desired  that could be useful  I believe it also has a command-line API so you can make it part of your build process

[c#] Embedding DLLs in a compiled executable

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