When an Assembly.Load is not really Assembly.Load

This is an interesting discovery I find when I was investigating a regression.

The following code is really Assembly.LoadFrom

                    AssemblyName assemName = new AssemblyName();
                    assemName.CodeBase = pathToAssembly;
                    resultAssembly = Assembly.Load(assemName);

It is the same as

                   resultAssembly = Assembly.LoadFrom(PathToAssembly);

Assembly.Load(AssemblyName) will first attempt to use the assembly name (name,version,culture,publickeytoken) to find the assembly. If that fails, and AssemblyName has a codebase set, CLR loader will attempt an Assembly.LoadFrom with the codebase.

In our example, since the name is empty, loader will directly try Assembly.LoadFrom on the codebase.

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 12, 2004
  And here I thought that was impossible. Does the loaded assembly get loaded into the Load or the LoadFrom context? (See, here's a case where that little utility I asked about would come in handy)
  
  I just did a simple test and I was able to load up a DLL from a directory that was not in or under the AppBase. I wish I had known this trick a few years ago...
  
  If it's loaded in the Load context, then is this considered to be a bug? If not, this is a real handy way to load an assembly that isn't under the appbase, or to which you have added a relative path to the private bin path. If it is a bug, how about not fixing it....
  
  Dave
  
• Anonymous
  March 12, 2004
  It is loaded in LoadFrom context. That is what I mean it is really Assembly.LoadFrom().