How to make a C# win service app to refer assemblies from a host machine

Question

I am building an agent service in C# to communicate with SCVMM installed on host. To do that the agent refers the following assemblies: Microsoft.SystemCenter.VirtualMachineManager.dll and Erros.dll etc.

In visual studio dev environment, I have added references to the agent app. When I build in debug/release mode basically I don't the above assemblies to be copied to debug/release directory, since the agent will distributed to customers. Basically agent app communicates with SCVMM, SCVMM must have been installed before installing the agent app.

One thing that I don't understand is how to make the agent service to refer Microsoft.SystemCenter.VirtualMachineManager.dll etc files that are already existing at <SCVMM root>/bin folder.

Are those assemblies added to the GAC when they are installed on a machine? — CodingGorilla, Oct 07 '11 at 17:41
No, Installing SCVMM does not register the assemblies to GAC. — Bala, Oct 08 '11 at 05:48

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:34

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Reference as normal in visual studio and before calling any method in the dll call :

AppDomain.CurrentDomain.AppendPrivatePath(scvmmroot + "/bin");

You could also do it in the yourapp.exe.config file (See Set Custom Path to Referenced DLL's? ) But as your path isn't relative to the executable that would mean generating the .config file in your installer.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:34

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answered Oct 07 '11 at 17:57

Julien Roncaglia

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How to make a C# win service app to refer assemblies from a host machine

1 Answers1