Injecting Code into an existing Assembly

Question

Is it possible to inject code to existing CLR assemblies using Roslyn? Apologies for asking this high level question because going through the Roslyn CTP Overview document I could not find answer to this question. I can't afford to spend hours and days into this just to find out whether it is possible. If it is possible, I dont mind spending days to learn it and then build code injection framework.

I understand it is possible to inject code during the compilation process and I could create a VS add-in for the purpose but I am really after injecting code to an assembly already generated. Any pointers would help. Thanks.

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Girish Jain

Answer 1

Roslyn isn't a decompiler - it's a source code compilation framework.  In order to do this via Roslyn, you'd need to decompile the assembly into C# or VB, then recompile that with Roslyn while doing your injection.

You might want to look at something like Mono's Cecil, as it's intended to modify assemblies which have already been compiled.

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Reed Copsey, Jr. - http://reedcopsey.com
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Answer 2

Thanks a lot Reed, you saved me many hours. I might come back to Roslyn in future, may be for some other purpose. In between, I am currently using Mono.Cecil for code injection, please read my blog post on same:

http://girishjjain.com/blog/post/Tracing-with-Code-Injection-Part-II.aspx

Thanks a lot!

-Girish Jain

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Girish Jain