Possible to set absolute path for references in CSharpCodeProvider?

Question

I'm creating new .cs-files with CodeDom and later want to compile/run them with CSharpCodeProvider but having some problem with references.

The code look like this:

        var provider = new CSharpCodeProvider();
        var compilerparams = new CompilerParameters(
            new[]
            {
                "First.dll",
                "Second.dll"
            })
        {
            GenerateExecutable = false,
            GenerateInMemory = true
        };
        CompilerResults results = provider.CompileAssemblyFromFile(compilerparams, _path);
        if (!results.Errors.HasErrors)
            return results.CompiledAssembly;
        var errors = new StringBuilder("Compiler Errors :\r\n");
        foreach (CompilerError error in results.Errors)
        {
            errors.AppendFormat("Line {0},{1}\t: {2}\n",
                error.Line, error.Column, error.ErrorText);
        }
        throw new Exception(errors.ToString());

"First.dll" and "Second.dll" exists in the same folder as my generated .cs-files and if I run it directly I get error. If I move them to my projects bin directory it work fine, but I would rather just keep them seperated.

Is it possible to set absolute path for "First.dll" and "Second.dll" or a path to a directory that contains all my references instead of moving them to my bin-directory?

I tried to change CompilerParameters to absolute paths but that didn't help.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 01 '15 at 15:14

I found a new solution to fix this problem. Instead of generate in memory I set an output path and return this path. So later when I want to use it I load it with Assembly.LoadFrom() (and it will use all referenced dlls in the same directory).

Example code,

How to generate assembly:

    public string CompileCode()
    {
        var provider = new CSharpCodeProvider();
        var outputPath = Path.Combine(Path.GetDirectoryName(_path), "temp.dll");
        var compilerparams = new CompilerParameters(
            new[]
            {
                @"D:\path\to\referenced\dll",
                @"D:\path\to\referenced\dll2"
            }, outputPath);
        CompilerResults results = provider.CompileAssemblyFromFile(compilerparams, _path);
        var i = results.PathToAssembly;
        if (!results.Errors.HasErrors)
            return i;
        var errors = new StringBuilder("Compiler Errors :\r\n");
        foreach (CompilerError error in results.Errors)
        {
            errors.AppendFormat("Line {0},{1}\t: {2}\n",
                error.Line, error.Column, error.ErrorText);
        }
        throw new Exception(errors.ToString());
    }

And to load it:

Assembly assembly = Assembly.LoadFrom(path);
//Do stuff with assembly

Good idea, but only problem is if I want to keep load same new compile files, `AppDomain.CurrentDomain` would increase all these assembly. did you find out ? — qakmak, Aug 02 '22 at 15:13

Possible to set absolute path for references in CSharpCodeProvider?

1 Answers1