assemblies

Does anyone know of a way to compare two .NET assemblies to determine whether they were built from the "same" source files? I am aware that there are some differencing utilities available, such as the plugin for Reflector, but I am not interested in viewing differences in a GUI, I just want an automated way to compare a collection of binaries to see whether they were built from the same (or equivalent) source files. I understand that multiple different source files could produce the same IL, and realise that the process would only be sensitive to differences in the IL, not the original source.

Two problems: 1) Basic .NET Assembly Not Included in ILMerged Assembly I'm having trouble using ILMerge in my post-build after upgrading from .NET 3.5/Visual Studio 2008 to .NET 4/Visual Studio 2010. I have a Solution with several projects whose target framework is set to ".NET Framework 4". I use the following ILMerge command to merge the individual project DLLs into a single DLL: if not $(ConfigurationName) == Debug if exist "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\ILMerge\ILMerge.exe" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\ILMerge\ILMerge.exe" /lib:"C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319" /lib

This assembly is in the GAC: Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.RegisteredServers.dll How can I add a reference to this assembly in Visual Studio? I can view the file in c:\windows\assembly\ As the others said, most of the time you won't want to do that because it doesn't copy the assembly to your project and it won't deploy with your project. However, if you're like me, and trying to add a reference that all target machines have in their GAC but it's not a .NET Framework assembly: Open the windows Run dialog (Windows Key + r) Type C:\Windows\assembly\gac_msil. This is some sort of weird hack that

I recently created an interface layer to distinguish the DataAccessProvider from our Business logic layer. With this approach we can change our choice of DataAccessProvider whenever we want by changing the values in the Web/App.Config. (more details can be given if needed). Anyway, to do this we use reflection to accomplish our DataProvider class on which we can work. /// <summary> /// The constructor will create a new provider with the use of reflection. /// If the assembly could not be loaded an AssemblyNotFoundException will be thrown. /// </summary> public DataAccessProviderFactory() {