FrameworkContext Class

SystemObject
  Nova.CodeDOMFrameworkContext

public class FrameworkContext

Assemblies for different target frameworks (.NETFramework, Silverlight) must be managed with separate FrameworkContexts so that when a framework assembly is loaded by simple name it will load the correct one and not mix assemblies from different target frameworks in the same project. Perhaps a single FrameworkContext could be shared for different target framework versions when using reflection-only loads or Mono Cecil loads, since different versions of the same assembly can be loaded simultaneously, but separate FrameworkContexts are used currently. Even if different FrameworkContexts exist for different target framework versions, they can generally share a single (current) AppDomain when using reflection-only or Mono Cecil loads, or if all projects target the same framework version and don't load different versions of the same assembly. The code also supports using an existing version of an assembly that differs from the requested one, which will often work without errors. Another complication is that the .NET 3.0 and 3.5 frameworks are "partial" releases that also use assemblies from previous releases, so their FrameworkContext objects must work together with those for the earlier versions (they can't be self-contained, because in some situations that would result in an attempt to load the same version of the same assembly twice into the same AppDomain). The .NET 4.0 release is complete, and doesn't have this problem. Actually, there is another exception - if a framework assembly doesn't exist in the current framework context, then in that case, it's OK to look in an earlier version. For example, some assemblies are versioned in the name, such as Microsoft.Build.Utilities.v3.5, so there's no name conflict between releases. For .NET 5.0, the assemblies are specified using NuGet format (a 'project.lock.json' file), typically located in the reference assemblies path ('C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\') under '.NETCore\v5.0'.