One big EXE file with all the DLLs in .NET
Where do I begin? … If you’re developing classic client side applications, like WinForms, having a one big EXE file to deploy is a huge benefit. One item to copy, you know all the dependencies are there and nobody can accidentally remove some, plus updating is a breeze too.
Sadly there’s nothing in the .NET available right now (my hopes are high for .NET Native). So you have to find some other way. Luckily there’s a way, in fact multiple.
There are some products on the market you can use – like ILMerge, SmartAssembly or PostSharp. In fact we used SmartAssembly, but lately it was getting more into our way instead of helping us. Thus decision has been made to replace it – and to my pleasure – replace it with something I’ll create. 😃
The path I chose, because I used it manually couple fo times before, was to use AppDomain.AssemblyResolve event. Handling this event you can load assembly the way you want. In my case from resources. The rest is just a glue. I also wanted to have a tool that will be fully autonomous and independent from the application itself.
For the impatient here’s the tool. Run it without any parameters and it gives you help. If you’re interested in details continue reading.
Embedding DLLs into resource
First step was taking all the DLLs around the EXE file and creating resources from these. For this, as for the rest of the project, I used with great pleasure Mono.Cecil library. The code is really easy.
static void EmbeddDlls(AssemblyDefinition assembly, string directory)
{
var resources = assembly.MainModule.Resources;
foreach (var dll in Directory.EnumerateFiles(directory, "*.dll", SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly))
{
var name = dll.Remove(0, directory.Length + 1);
Console.WriteLine($" {name}");
var resource = new EmbeddedResource($"{Definitions.Prefix}{name}", ManifestResourceAttributes.Private, File.ReadAllBytes(dll));
resources.Add(resource);
}
}
I’m giving the resources a prefix with a pipe | symbol as a separator to minimize collisions.
Injecting AppDomain.AssemblyResolve event
This event needs to be handled as soon as possible, before any dependencies are needed and itself needs to be self-contained because the dependencies loading is just running. So I decided the good place to put it is a static constructor of the class where the entry point is. To minimize any code I have to generate I’m just calling an injected method (more about that in following section) that does all the steps for attaching a handler to the event.
Only small hurdle is that I need to either generate completely new static constructor if there’s none or inject into existing otherwise, handling also the beforefieldinit flag.
public static void ProcessCctor(TypeDefinition type, string prefix)
{
var cctor = type.Methods.FirstOrDefault(m => m.IsStatic && m.IsConstructor);
if (cctor == null)
{
cctor = new MethodDefinition(
CctorName,
MethodAttributes.Private | MethodAttributes.Static | MethodAttributes.HideBySig | MethodAttributes.SpecialName | MethodAttributes.RTSpecialName,
type.Module.Import(typeof(void)));
cctor.Body.Instructions.Add(Instruction.Create(OpCodes.Ret));
type.Methods.Add(cctor);
}
type.Attributes = type.Attributes & ~TypeAttributes.BeforeFieldInit;
cctor.Body.Instructions.Insert(0, Instruction.Create(OpCodes.Call, new MethodReference($"{prefix}.cctor", cctor.ReturnType, type)));
}
I inject the simple call instruction at the beginning and that’s it.
The assembly loading code
Because I didn’t wanted to generate everything in IL manually I opted for compiling the actual code into my executable and then “just copying it” to the executable I’m processing.
The code is in a class in a shape I’d like to have it in the entry point’s class at the end. And it’s trying to use as less C# features as possible to make the copying simple. For example lambdas often create closures, which are classes in IL and that increases the complexity. But because the code is really not long, sticking to basic C# is fine for me.
static class InjectMe
{
static InjectMe()
{
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.AssemblyResolve += AssemblyResolve;
}
static Assembly AssemblyResolve(object sender, ResolveEventArgs args)
{
var assemblyName = new AssemblyName(args.Name);
return GetLoadedAssembly(assemblyName) ?? GetEmbeddedAssembly(assemblyName);
}
static Assembly GetLoadedAssembly(AssemblyName assemblyName)
{
foreach (var a in AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies())
{
if (a.FullName == assemblyName.FullName || a.GetName().Name == assemblyName.Name)
{
return a;
}
}
return null;
}
static Assembly GetEmbeddedAssembly(AssemblyName assemblyName)
{
var executingAssembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
foreach (var resourceName in executingAssembly.GetManifestResourceNames())
{
using (var s = executingAssembly.GetManifestResourceStream($"{Definitions.Prefix}{assemblyName.Name}.dll"))
{
if (s != null)
{
using (BinaryReader reader = new BinaryReader(s))
{
return Assembly.Load(reader.ReadBytes((int)s.Length));
}
}
}
}
return null;
}
}
Copying the assembly loading code
I thought it will be “just copying it”. In fact it needed some processing around as well. Importing into modules. Handling names, because, similar to the resources, I used the same prefix to minimize collisions.
It took me a while to figure everything out. Mostly by trial and error, comparing the IL a lot in ILSpy and thinking about errors from Mono.Cecil. Through it was tedious, I liked it! So much of new stuff (like module imports)!
static MethodDefinition CopyMethod(MethodDefinition source, TypeDefinition destination, string prefix)
{
var targetModule = destination.Module;
var newMethod = new MethodDefinition($"{prefix}{source.Name}", FixAttributes(source.Attributes), targetModule.Import(source.ReturnType));
foreach (var p in source.Parameters)
{
newMethod.Parameters.Add(DuplicateParameter(p, targetModule));
}
newMethod.Body.InitLocals = source.Body.InitLocals;
foreach (var v in source.Body.Variables)
{
newMethod.Body.Variables.Add(DuplicateVariable(v, targetModule));
}
foreach (var i in source.Body.Instructions)
{
var operand = i.Operand;
if (operand is MethodReference)
{
var methodReference = operand as MethodReference;
if (methodReference.DeclaringType == source.DeclaringType)
{
methodReference = FixLocalMethodReference(methodReference, destination, prefix, targetModule);
}
newMethod.Body.Instructions.Add(Instruction.Create(i.OpCode, targetModule.Import(methodReference)));
continue;
}
if (operand is FieldReference)
{
newMethod.Body.Instructions.Add(Instruction.Create(i.OpCode, targetModule.Import(operand as FieldReference)));
continue;
}
if (operand is TypeReference)
{
newMethod.Body.Instructions.Add(Instruction.Create(i.OpCode, targetModule.Import(operand as TypeReference)));
continue;
}
newMethod.Body.Instructions.Add(i);
}
foreach (var eh in source.Body.ExceptionHandlers)
{
newMethod.Body.ExceptionHandlers.Add(DuplicateExceptionHandler(eh, source, newMethod, targetModule));
}
destination.Methods.Add(newMethod);
return newMethod;
}
static MethodAttributes FixAttributes(MethodAttributes attributes)
{
return attributes & ~MethodAttributes.RTSpecialName & ~MethodAttributes.SpecialName;
}
static MethodReference FixLocalMethodReference(MethodReference m, TypeDefinition destination, string prefix, ModuleDefinition targetModule)
{
var method = new MethodReference($"{prefix}{m.Name}", targetModule.Import(m.ReturnType), destination);
foreach (var p in m.Parameters)
{
method.Parameters.Add(DuplicateParameter(p, targetModule));
}
return method;
}
static VariableDefinition DuplicateVariable(VariableDefinition v, ModuleDefinition targetModule)
{
return new VariableDefinition(v.Name, targetModule.Import(v.VariableType));
}
static ParameterDefinition DuplicateParameter(ParameterDefinition p, ModuleDefinition targetModule)
{
return new ParameterDefinition(p.Name, p.Attributes, targetModule.Import(p.ParameterType));
}
static ExceptionHandler DuplicateExceptionHandler(ExceptionHandler eh, MethodDefinition source, MethodDefinition newMethod, ModuleDefinition targetModule)
{
return new ExceptionHandler(eh.HandlerType)
{
CatchType = eh.CatchType != null ? targetModule.Import(eh.CatchType) : null,
TryStart = newMethod.Body.Instructions[source.Body.Instructions.IndexOf(eh.TryStart)],
TryEnd = newMethod.Body.Instructions[source.Body.Instructions.IndexOf(eh.TryEnd)],
HandlerType = eh.HandlerType,
HandlerStart = newMethod.Body.Instructions[source.Body.Instructions.IndexOf(eh.HandlerStart)],
HandlerEnd = newMethod.Body.Instructions[source.Body.Instructions.IndexOf(eh.HandlerEnd)],
FilterStart = eh.FilterStart,
};
}
Summary
It was a joy to work on something simple and straightforward from outside, learning more about the internals of IL and .NET. I could get used to it. 😃
The complete code is available in this repository. Feel free to contribute and improve it.
