Friday, June 27, 2008

If you want to view a Assembly how to you go about it (Twist : What is ILDASM ?) ?

When it comes to understanding of internals nothing can beat ILDASM. ILDASM basically converts the whole exe or dll in to IL code.
To run ILDASM you have to go to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\SDK\v1.1\Bin".
Note: this applies if you had v1.1 you have to probably change it depending on the type of framework version you have.
If you run IDASM.EXE from the path you will be popped with the IDASM exe program as shown in figure ILDASM. Click on file and browse to the respective directory for the DLL whose assembly you want to view. After you select the DLL you will be popped with a tree view details of the DLL as shown in figure ILDASM.
On double clicking on manifest you will be able to view details of assembly, internal IL code etc.