* Tools : ILMerge

Few important points to be noted before we get to the usage of this utility.

• Its a utility which merges multiple .NET assemblies into a single assembly.
• It will not work if assembly contains unmanaged code.
• Its a console application but all its functionality is available programmatically also.
• The type of first assembly in the list of input assemblies determines whether target assembly is exe or dll.
• It supports strong named assemblies also.
• Download : It can be downloaded from here.

To understand its usage lets create two libraries lib1 and lib2 with following source code :

Let Lib1 contain the following code :

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

namespace Lib1
{
    public class Class1
    {
        public void GetHello()
        {
            System.Console.WriteLine("Hello from Lib1");
        }
    }
}

Let Lib2 contain the following source code :

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

namespace Lib2
{
    public class Class1
    {
        public void GetHello()
        {
            System.Console.WriteLine("Hello from Lib2");
        }
    }
}

Build both the assemblies and run ILMerge tool to generate a new assembly called LibUnited.dll

Use the following command :

ilmerge   /out:LibUnited.dll     lib1.dll       lib2.dll

Investigate the new dll using ildasm and you will the contents of both the input dll into it. To confirm the merge lets build a console app which uses this new dll.

Create a console app with following code & add a reference to LibUnited and not Lib1 or Lib2.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using Lib1;
using Lib2;

namespace UseLib
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Lib1.Class1 lc1 = new Lib1.Class1();
            Lib2.Class1 lc2 = new Lib2.Class1();
            lc1.GetHello();
            lc2.GetHello();
        }
    }
}

The output you should get is :

Hello from Lib1
Hello from Lib2

The main advantage of this tool comes in the scenario where large number of application components are getting developed/tested by independent teams and during integration of those components instead of having so many assemblies, they can be merged into a single assembly.

~tata & take care~

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