Dependencies that are never merged

SmartAssembly will never merge or embed the following types of dependency:

• Dependencies containing mixed managed/unmanaged code
• Primary Interop Assemblies
• Dependencies signed using Microsoft's strong-naming key (PublicKeyToken 31bf3856ad364e35)

If the Microsoft assembly mentioned in the last item is not a Framework Class Library, a potential workaround is to use ildasm.exe to dump the IL to a folder and reassemble it using ilasm.exe, signing it with your own strong-naming key.

Merging WPF dependencies

Your program might not work if you merge a dependency containing WPF, and name mangling is enabled for the dependency. In this case, do not apply name mangling to the dependency.

Third-party DLLs

You may not be able to merge a third-party DLL. In some cases, the DLL has integrity protection and will fail to load if the code is changed, which happens when the dependency is merged with the main EXE. If this happens, embed the dependency instead of merging it (see Embedding dependencies).

Complex merging

Merging may fail if your application has a complex architecture and you have not merged all dependencies together. A typical example of when merging may cause your application to fail is when you are using a plug-in, as in the case below:

Assume that both MainExe.exe and Plugin.dll reference Shared.dll, and also that MainExe.exe loads Plugin.dll.

If you merge Shared.dll into MainExe.exe, then MainExe.exe and Plugin.dll will not be able to communicate using types from Shared.dll. This is because the fully-qualified names of those types will have changed from Shared, MyNamespace.MyType to MainExe, MyNamespace.MyType.

The solution is to use [ForwardWhenMerged] attribute for all the types in Shared.dll that should be accessible by both MainExe.exe and Plugin.dll. SmartAssembly will use type forwarding to ensure Plugin.dll can still locate types from Shared.dll even when it's merged. See Merging assemblies others depend on for more information.

The wrong version of the dependency is merged

For more information, see How SmartAssembly searches for dependencies.