A constant narrower than its stack type builds as a plain ldc.i4, which
infers as int, so a conditional whose other branch really is a char saw
two different types and the whole tree was left as the Expression calls
that built it - EF Core's StringCharConverter.ToChar is one. Bool and
enum constants were already wrapped for this reason; the wrap now
applies wherever the built value does not infer as the declared type.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5:Claude Code
The builder returned by ConvertLambda hands back null when a nested
conversion declines, and the result was cast and dereferenced before
anything checked it, so a tree the transform cannot handle took down the
whole method with a NullReferenceException instead of being left alone.
EF Core's StringCharConverter.ToChar is such a tree: the conditional
spills the Expression.Call arguments into stack slots, which
MatchGetMethodFromHandle does not see through.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5:Claude Code
A hand-built Expression.Equal whose operands are a type parameter has no
lambda to decompile to: `v == other` is CS0019 for a type parameter, and
boxing both operands compiles but compares box identity where the tree
compares values once the parameter is a value type. The conversion now
declines, leaving the Expression calls that built the tree.
Found in EF Core's BoolToTwoValuesConverter<TProvider>.ToBool, which
decompiled to code that does not compile.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5:Claude Code
The parameters standing in for the expanded arguments were built from
the element type of the array the compiler had built, not from the
element type the params collection declares. The two can only differ
where the collection is covariant in its element type, and no compiler
emits that shape today - it materializes the array into a local of the
target type first, which the pattern no longer matches - so this only
removes the dependency on that.
Where the params collection is one overload resolution cannot unpack,
the expanded form is now abandoned instead of being built from a type
that resolution would never have used.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5:Claude Code
Resolving a method reference and resolving one by name and signature
differed in three ways that had no reason to differ: only the metadata
path found a static constructor, only it restricted the candidates to
the declared members, and only it matched a vararg signature against
its required parameters plus __arglist.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5:Claude Code
MatchArrayInitializerFinal selects the operator by its return type, so
the block's result type is that return type. The declaring type only
happens to be the same one for the two array-to-span operators; Span<T>
also declares the conversion to ReadOnlySpan<T>.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5:Claude Code
An array initializer standing in for a Span<T>/ReadOnlySpan<T> reaches the
call builder as an implicit span conversion over the array creation, a shape
the params expansion did not know, so a params span argument came out as the
array the compiler had built rather than as the argument list that was
written.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
The block addresses its allocation through the pointer localloc returns, and
only its result is a Span<T>. Retyping the initializer variable to the span
made every element store ask for a pointer it no longer had, which was papered
over with a conv from the span; once Obj and VT became distinct stack types
that conv had no conversion kind left and the whole method failed to decompile.
The span constructor becomes the block's final instruction instead, so the
element stores keep the pointer they were written against and the block still
evaluates to the span.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
The Span<T>/ReadOnlySpan<T> initializer patterns replaced their call with an
array initializer block, so an array stood where a span was expected: the
enclosing leave and any call taking the result saw StackType.Obj against the
StackType.VT the span type demands. The block now ends in the implicit
conversion the C# compiler applies, which is the one shape besides a bare
ldloc that an array initializer may take; the expression builder keeps the
conversion out of the output but not out of the expression's type.
Naming that operator wants a method looked up by signature rather than by a
predicate over the type's members, so MetadataModule grows a ResolveMethod
overload for it, sharing its signature matching with the metadata path.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
The Span<T>/ReadOnlySpan<T> initializer patterns replaced their call with an
array initializer block, so an array stood where a span was expected: the
enclosing leave and any call taking the result saw StackType.Obj against the
StackType.VT the span type demands. The conversion the C# compiler applies is
the implicit operator, and it has to wrap the block rather than sit inside it,
because an ArrayInitializer block must keep ldloc as its final instruction.
Without the operator the conversion cannot be expressed at all, so the
original call is left untransformed instead.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
A conversion of a small integer type to Int32 returns its operand unchanged,
because such values already occupy an I4 stack slot. The two operands of
`(short a, int b) => a + b` are therefore Int16 and Int32, and requiring them
to be equal rejected the conversion; the whole expression tree was then left
untransformed, or worse, aborted the enclosing method. What
BinaryNumericInstruction requires of its operands is a common stack type.
TryConvertExpressionTree also has to cope with a builder that fails, rather
than dereferencing the lambda it did not get.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
An unconstrained type parameter has no known IsReferenceType, and since the
stack types were split it takes StackType.VT, so a call on it reached
CallInstruction with a VT 'this' argument where Obj was expected. It might be
a value type at runtime, so it needs the same box a known value type gets.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
An expression tree leaves the boxing of a value-type receiver implicit: it
carries no Convert node for it, because the boxing follows from the method
being declared on a reference type. Enum.HasFlag invoked on an enum value is
the common case, and it reached CallInstruction with an I4 'this' argument
where Obj was expected, which aborts a debug build outright.
Deciding by the target's own type also retires the StackType.VT arm, which
ExpectedTypeForThisPointer never returns. Since box records the type of what
it boxes, an expression-tree cast to that same type in front of it is dropped.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
A conversion from a value type to a reference type produced an opaque cast, so
no box instruction appeared anywhere in the converted tree, while the same C#
compiled as a plain lambda yields box T. The operand type is what box takes,
and it is available from the converted operand.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
Compiling the same C# twice, once as Expression<Func<...>> and once as a plain
Func<...>, and diffing the two ILFunction bodies exposes where the conversion
reconstructs something the IL reader would never build. Three such cases:
The sign is part of the opcode only for the checked add/sub/mul and for
div/rem/shr; ILReader leaves it at Sign.None elsewhere, while the conversion
took it from the operand type unconditionally.
Expression.MemberInit is an object initializer, not a collection initializer.
Expression.Convert's three-argument overload carries the user-defined
conversion operator - which is how the decimal conversions are encoded - and
that argument was read by nothing, so every such conversion collapsed into an
opaque cast that dropped the method. Emitting the call matches what the
transform already does for decimal arithmetic.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
Every converter now states the Expression.* call it matches and the ILAst it
produces, and the argument-count switches label the factory overload each case
stands for. The shapes were read off ILAst dumps of compiled expression trees
rather than from the factory signatures; two branches are documented as
unreachable, since no arithmetic or logical factory declares the four-argument
(left, right, liftToNull, method) overload their case matches.
Also drops the result-type local left in ConvertField, which BuildField
re-derives from the field and the type hint.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
ConvertConstant is its only caller, and with the result type gone the
out parameter that reconstructed it - a switch over LdNull/LdStr/Ldc* -
has no consumer. What remains is a match condition: the two-argument
Expression.Constant overload must pass its type as typeof(T), while the
one-argument overload legacy csc emits for display-class instances has
nothing to check.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
Every converter handed back a (Func<ILInstruction>, IType) pair, and the
IType was consumed by matchers that ran before the builder. Now that the
ILAst instructions carry their own types, InferType() on the built operand
answers the same questions, so the type-dependent decisions move into the
builders and the pair collapses to the builder alone. Builders that could
already fail (ConvertArrayIndex) set the precedent for returning null from
inside one; ConvertInstruction propagates that.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
ConvertBind is the only expression-tree converter whose IType nobody reads:
ConvertMemberInit, its sole caller, takes Item1 and discards the rest, and
the member type is recoverable from the Call/StObj it builds anyway.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
System.Linq.Expressions resolves the user-defined operator behind a binary
factory by metadata name (Expression.Add looks up op_Addition), and the
checked factories reuse the unchecked names: AddChecked also looks up
op_Addition, never op_CheckedAddition. Recording that name at the call site
keeps the mapping next to the factory it belongs to.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
Resolving one assembly resolves its whole reference closure, and every
reference in it asked the same framework directories the same questions.
The worst of it was the scan for the closest version folder of a shared
framework: a directory listing plus a recursive file search, repeated per
reference and per runtime pack - 42 scans for two distinct answers when
decompiling ICSharpCode.ILSpyX.dll.
The scan result is only safe to keep for a bounded time: a runtime can be
installed or removed while ILSpy runs, and reloading an assembly list has
to see that. So it is kept for the length of an explicitly opened scope,
which the type system opens around the closure it resolves and closes
again afterwards; outside a scope the file system is read as before. The
scope owns what was read, so two of them on one resolver do not stack -
the first to end takes it, and the other reads the file system again.
BeginSnapshot is on IAssemblyResolver rather than an interface of its
own: it is core functionality of a resolver, and one implementation is
not an abstraction. This breaks the interface for implementors outside
this repository, who opt out by returning null - which is what the three
resolvers here that hold nothing do.
The remaining probes cost nothing to fix: the preferred runtime pack was
listed among the defaults it already belongs to, so its directory was
scanned twice for every reference that is not in it, and one package
folder was probed once per assembly the package contains.
Measured over 27 references with a fresh resolver each time: 3.3 ms per
assembly before, 3.1 ms without a scope, 1.1 ms with one.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5:Claude Code
Metadata as attributes on an item element is MSBuild 15 syntax. The
non-SDK project format is what an export falls back to for toolchains
that predate the SDK, and those reject an unknown attribute on an item
element, so a Page item carrying Generator and SubType as attributes
undoes the reason to write that format at all. Every non-SDK project
written by anything else keeps metadata in child elements.
The SDK-style writer keeps attributes: there the syntax is a given and
it is what the format's own tooling produces.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5:Claude Code
The project exporter wrote every XAML document to the project root under
a fully-qualified name while the code-behind class went into a directory
named after its namespace, so the two halves of one partial class ended
up in different places. WPF tooling pairs MainWindow.xaml with
MainWindow.xaml.cs by name and location; anything else is an unrelated
file to it, and --nested-directories made the split wider still by moving
only the C# half.
Both now go through one function that decides where a type's files live,
so the document lands where the type's own C# file would have, and the
code-behind is named after the document. The BAML writers of the UI and
of the command line had grown their own copies of the naming, which is
how they came to disagree with the C# writer in the first place.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5:Claude Code
The GAC probe only ever looked for the exact folder of the requested version.
For about a hundred assemblies the .NET Framework 4.7.2/4.8 reference assemblies
carry a higher version than the implementation ever installed in the GAC
(System.IO.Compression is 4.2.0.0 against 4.0.0.0 in the GAC, System.Runtime is
4.1.2.0, ...), because out-of-band packages shipped those versions and the ref
assemblies had to keep up. The runtime hides this behind assembly unification;
without an equivalent, every reference to one of them was reported as
unresolvable.
Matching on the major version keeps assemblies apart that share a name but are
different products, e.g. Microsoft.Build.Framework 4.0.0.0 and 15.x.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5:Claude Code
The exporter dropped PresentationFramework, System.Xaml, System.Windows.Forms
and System.Drawing from every project it wrote, whatever the assembly used,
while a second list held the remaining WPF assemblies behind a WPF check. The
SDK draws the line elsewhere: Microsoft.NET.Sdk.WindowsDesktop.props promotes
the nine _WpfCommonNetFxReference items to _SDKImplicitReference only when
UseWPF is set, System.Windows.Forms only when UseWindowsForms is, and
WindowsFormsIntegration only when both are. A XAML-only assembly therefore lost
a reference that nothing supplied, and a WPF application that also used Windows
Forms lost the Windows Forms references while the project only said UseWPF.
Following the SDK there makes WPF and Windows Forms independent rather than
alternatives, which is what the flags enum is for: an assembly can use both,
and then both properties have to be written. Where an assembly looks like more
than one kind of project, the web SDK wins the Sdk attribute, because
Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web imports Microsoft.NET.Sdk and so carries the desktop
targets, while Microsoft.NET.Sdk.WindowsDesktop carries no web targets.
System.Drawing stays unconditional: Microsoft.NET.Sdk.BeforeCommon.targets adds
it for every .NETFramework target rather than only for Windows Forms ones, and
on .NET Core it ships in the Microsoft.NETCore.App reference pack.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
An exported WPF project listed PresentationCore next to the implicit
Windows Desktop framework reference, which is a duplicate reference
(MSB3243) or an unresolvable one (MSB3245) once the hint path stops
pointing anywhere. The target-pack filter that should have caught it
asks the assembly resolver, which answers by probing the shared
frameworks installed on the machine running the export - so the same
assembly exported from Linux, or from a Windows box without the
desktop runtime, produced a different project file. What the SDK adds
for UseWPF is a fixed list, so match it by name instead.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
Microsoft.NET.Sdk imports the Windows Desktop targets itself for .NET
Framework and for .NET 5 and later, and warns (NETSDK1137) about every
project that still names the separate SDK. Only .NET Core 3.x, where
those targets are not imported without a platform-suffixed moniker,
genuinely needs Microsoft.NET.Sdk.WindowsDesktop.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
A .NET 5 or later project that sets UseWPF or UseWindowsForms is
rejected outright (NETSDK1136) unless its target framework names the
Windows platform, so an exported WPF assembly produced a project that
could not build at all. The platform belongs to the assembly rather
than to WPF - TargetPlatformAttribute records it, SupportedOSPlatform
its minimum version - so the moniker follows the attributes wherever
they are present, and falls back to plain "windows" only for a desktop
project built before those attributes existed. Monikers older than
net5.0 take no platform suffix and must not grow one.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
The WPF markup compiler generates the program entry point from the
ApplicationDefinition item, so an exported project that lists App.xaml
as a Page has no Main at all and fails to build with CS5001. Both the
UI and ilspycmd already resolve the BAML root's partial class, which
makes deriving Application from System.Windows.Application the natural
signal. The module additionally has to have an entry point of its own:
a library that merely contains an Application subclass would otherwise
have MSBuild generate a Main into it.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
Sanitizing a resource name is not injective: "a+b/logo.png", "a&b/logo.png"
and "a#b/logo.png" all come out as "a-b/logo.png". The writers create files
with FileMode.Create, so every colliding entry but the last was lost, and
nothing was written to the error list to say so - an assembly can be built
to make that happen to as many entries as it likes. A WPF probe assembly
with 20 resource entries exported as 13 files.
Uniquifying is enough because the exported item already pins the true name
in its LogicalName, so the file on disk has to be unique, not faithful. The
suffix search resumes where the previous collision on a name left off, so a
crafted pile of collisions stays linear rather than quadratic, and the name
is trimmed to keep the segment within the file system's limit.
Directory creation moves inside the per-entry error recovery for the same
reason: an entry named after a directory another entry needs makes it throw,
and that has to cost the one entry rather than the rest of the container.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
A rebuilt WPF project only resolves its own pack URIs when every entry of
"<AssemblyName>.g.resources" comes back under the resource ID it had before.
The file on disk cannot carry that ID: it is sanitized for the file system,
and the ID itself is escaped. Verified against a WPF assembly built for this:
the WPF build tasks re-escape whatever LogicalName they are given, so the item
has to hand them the decoded name, and an entry left as EmbeddedResource
rebuilds into a manifest resource of its own instead of into ".g.resources".
The adjustment is made where the items are collected, so it covers the base
class and both hosts that plug their own BAML handling into it without
widening the WriteResourceToFile or IResourceFileHandler contracts.
The Resource build action this gives them is also what #2253 asks for.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
The SDK-style writer only ever emitted EmbeddedResource items, so every other
item type the export produced never reached the project file. XAML recovered
from BAML lands in Page items: ILSpy wrote the .xaml files to disk and the
project referenced none of them, leaving an exported WPF project that cannot
rebuild.
Explicit items collide with the SDK's own globs - a UseWPF project globs
**/*.xaml into Page, and NETSDK1022 rejects the duplicate - so each include is
preceded by a remove of the same item type, the pattern the EmbeddedResource
path already uses. Setting EnableDefaultPageItems=false would work as well, but
it is WPF-specific and switches off a glob for the whole project, whereas the
remove is per item, applies to any item type, and keeps the SDK's item
definitions (XamlRuntime) in effect.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
WPF's build tasks key every Page and Resource item in
"<AssemblyName>.g.resources" by the item's relative path, lower-cased and
run through Uri.GetComponents(Path, UriEscaped) - so a folder named
"Resource Test" arrives as "resource%20test", and a folder named in any
non-ASCII script arrives as a run of UTF-8 percent escapes. Those escapes
are not part of the name; sanitizing them turned "resource%20test" into
"resource-20test" and any Chinese or umlaut folder into a line of hex.
Measured against a WPF assembly built for this: only space, '#', '{', '}'
and non-ASCII bytes are ever escaped, and Uri.UnescapeDataString is the
exact inverse - anything the escaper leaves alone contains no percent
sign, and a literal one arrives as %25. Only the WPF-generated containers
are affected, so a percent sign in any other .resources file stays part
of the name.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5[1m]:Claude Code
Roslyn passes a display class into a local function by ref, and a local
function that only forwards that parameter to a sibling has no closure
variable of its own. The closure analysis therefore found nothing to
anchor it and fell back to the root method body, which put it out of
reach of the callees it forwards to; CallBuilder then hit the assert
guarding a local function reference it cannot resolve and emitted the
raw metadata name of the target instead.
The constructor path also mixed use-site containers into a scope the
closure analysis had already determined; when the use-sites live in
separate function bodies there is no common container, and resetting to
the constructor body threw that scope away.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5:Claude Code
A chain of type forwarders is followed by assembly name, and every name resolves relative
to the assembly being decompiled - so a chain that leaves for another framework can be
pulled straight back into the directory it started in. A .NET Standard 2.0 assembly
sitting among .NET Framework 4.6.1 facades lost System.Linq.Enumerable that way: the
chain went netstandard -> System.Core (from the shared framework) -> System.Linq (back to
the input directory) -> netstandard, arriving at an assembly it had already passed
through. Nothing in the closure defines the type, so it stayed unknown and every LINQ
call decompiled as a static call with a delegate cast.
Once the closure is loaded, chains that return to an assembly they already visited are
walked a second time, resolving each hop next to the assembly that forwards it. The
assembly ending the repaired chain is loaded only once it is confirmed to declare the
type; it then wins the deduplication against the assembly of the same name it displaces,
which version order says nothing about. An assembly that neither forwards nor declares
the type ends the walk with nothing loaded, so a failed repair cannot displace anything.
Only chains that are already broken are walked twice. Preferring the forwarder's own
directory as a resolution policy was tried first and rejected: measured against a corpus,
it moved a .NET 8 facade's System.Runtime reference out of a net4x compilation, splitting
type identities so that overrides printed as virtual. The two cases cannot be told apart
where references are resolved, because that layer sees assembly names, not the type whose
chain is or is not terminating.
AssemblyReference now knows the module that declares it, which is what lets a hop be
resolved next to its forwarder, and its metadata reader is that module's.
A chain that cannot be repaired is reported in the reference load log the UI already
shows, once per reference: a facade forwards hundreds of types and they all fail together.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5:Claude Code
Obfuscators put arbitrary characters into BAML strings, and XML 1.0 has no
representation for most control characters - a numeric character reference is invalid
for them too. Writing such a document threw ArgumentException from XmlWriter, which
loses the resource on project export and shows an exception instead of the page in the
UI. The escapes are spelled the way the C# output spells them, so one convention covers
both languages. Namespace URIs have to be escaped where the XNamespace is created rather
than in the final pass: the URI is baked into every element name built from it, so
patching only the xmlns declaration would desync the two. Characters XML can carry stay
untouched, so ordinary documents decompile byte-identically.
Every BAML stream of an assembly lives in one .resources container, and the recovery
around resource writing sat outside the loop over its entries, so a single page that
could not be written discarded every other page sharing the container with it.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5:Claude Code
GetPointerElementType existed because a pointer passing through a stack
slot could be typed IntPtr: ILReader replaced the slot type with
FindType(StackType) whenever the inferred type did not match the stack
type. With InferType() implemented on every ILInstruction that fallback
is gone (FlushExpressionStack now asserts the inferred type is
stack-accurate), so the target's inferred type is precise and the
definition chain no longer needs to be walked. Merged stack slots were
never recovered by the helper anyway (it required a single store).
Disabling the PointerType arm makes the uint*/byte* deconstruction
fixtures fail, so the sign-agnostic stobj.Type fallback remains guarded.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-fable-5:Claude Code
Siegfried Pammer
Daniel Grunwald