Embed DLL into Exe

Question

Is there a way to build my exe that other references will be embedded? for example. the System.Data.Entity.dll.

Be careful about licensing issues. – CodesInChaos Feb 26 '13 at 05:05 — CodesInChaos, Feb 26 '13 at 05:05

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 26 '13 at 04:59

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ILMerge - Microsoft Research is a utility that can be used to merge multiple .NET assemblies into a single assembly. It is freely available for use from the Tools & Utilities page at the Microsoft Research page.

answered Feb 26 '13 at 04:59

Jeremy Thompson

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Yeah. I did some research about that. But it fails on merging. Can you site an example for this? or things I need to assure first before merging? Thanks for fast response though – roybalderama Feb 26 '13 at 05:04
Sharing your research helps everyone. Can you edit your question and tell us what the error is? Thanks. Looking around the "fails on merging" seems be quite well known: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1807652/ilmerge-dll-not-merged-in-correctly and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9376/ilmerge-best-practices – Jeremy Thompson Feb 26 '13 at 05:06

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 17 '13 at 16:34

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Optionally:

If you are using Visual Studio w/Nuget, you can simply set your needed reference to 'copy local = true' and install Fody.Costura.

You can refine things a bit using a simple xml file, per the documentation provided on the project page (as well as tidy-up your build directory if desired).

answered May 17 '13 at 16:34

Handprint

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I second this. Once it's installed, it automatically combines everything into the exe. A classic case of "it just works". – Steve Smith May 12 '17 at 10:43

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 26 '13 at 05:09

One way is to embed the dll as a resource, then extract it to the filesystem at run time and then dynamically load it.

Although it is hard to imagine why you would need to do this - there are various installation mechanisms that allow you to package multiple files and deploy them together.

Embed DLL into Exe

3 Answers3