Getting a copy of a DLL in the GAC
A few weeks ago, Patrick Wellink blogged about how you would get a copy of a DLL when it's in the GAC. Today I had the same problem but after reading Patrick's blog post and the comments, I decided to write a small console application to make that process somewhat easier.
This application takes at least two arguments. The first argument is the physical path to the GAC on the system. The second is the path where the DLL needs to be copied. The following example copies all Crystal components in the GAC to a backup folder:
GetGACAssemblies C:\Windows\Assembly C:\Projects\GACBackup Crystal*.dll
If you just need a backup of all GAC assemblies, simply do something like this:
GetGACAssemblies C:\Windows\Assembly C:\Projects\GACBackup
To build the application, I used the ScanDirectory class I blogged about earlier. The code for this console application is really simple:
using System;
using System.IO;
namespace GetGACAssemblies
{ class Program
{ private static string _targetPath;
static void Main(string[] args)
{ // You need at least two arguments
if (args.Length >= 2)
{ // Get the target path and make sure it exists
_targetPath = args[1];
if (!_targetPath.EndsWith(@"\"))
{ _targetPath += @"\";
}
if (!Directory.Exists(_targetPath))
{ Directory.CreateDirectory(_targetPath);
}
// Setup the directory scanner object
ScanDirectory scanner = new ScanDirectory();
scanner.FileEvent += new ScanDirectory.FileEventHandler(scanner_FileEvent);
if (args.Length == 2)
{ scanner.SearchPattern = "*.dll";
}
else
{ scanner.SearchPattern = args[2];
}
// Start the scan
scanner.WalkDirectory(args[0]);
}
}
static void scanner_FileEvent(object sender, FileEventArgs e)
{ string newFile = _targetPath + e.Info.Name;
if (File.Exists(newFile))
{ File.Delete(newFile);
}
File.Copy(e.Info.FullName, newFile);
}
}
}
You can download the code for the console application here.