ApplicationContext Fields

The .NET AppDomain object associated with this ApplicationContext instance.

Map of assemblies to projects in which they are referenced (used only when loading with reflection).

Loaded assemblies indexed by assembly (used only when loading with reflection, to handle already-loaded assemblies).

Loaded assemblies indexed by display name, and also short name for the latest version.

Use Mono Cecil to load assemblies instead of reflection. Loaded data will use types in the Mono.Cecil namespace such as AssemblyDefinition, TypeDefinition, MethodDefinition, PropertyDefinition, FieldDefinition, etc. instead of the reflection types of Assembly, Type, MethodInfo, PropertyInfo, FieldInfo, etc. Using Mono Cecil is faster than reflection, and gets around various possible issues, including the inability to unload reflection data from memory.

Use reflection-only loads to load assemblies (ignored if using Mono Cecil loads). Reflection-only loads bypass strong name verifications, CAS policy checks, processor architecture loading rules, binding policies, don't execute any init code, and prevent automatic probing of dependencies. This can help to load assemblies that otherwise wouldn't be loadable, but it can also cause loading problems of its own, such as trying to load old framework assemblies (due to bypassing binding policies) that aren't compatible with newer and/or 64bit OSes, or illegal cross-references with normally-loaded assemblies. However, logic has been added to workaround these issues in most cases, and NOT using reflection-only loads prevents loading old versions of framework assemblies, which can cause resolve conflicts (in either case, old versions of 'mscorlib' can never be loaded into the default app domain).