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
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
ILSpyX had no instrumentation, yet most UI-visible latency bottoms out
here: lazy assembly loads, the first-resolve cascade that metadata-loads
every assembly in a list snapshot, per-module search strategy runs,
analyzer scope scans over all assemblies and their references, bundle/zip
entry extraction, and PDB loading. The provider mirrors the
ICSharpCode.Decompiler design: Start/Stop pairs, keyword gating, and
IsEnabled() guards at every call site; per-entry package extraction is
Verbose because of its volume.
AbstractSearchStrategy.Search is now a non-virtual template method that
wraps the span around a new protected SearchCore, so derived strategies
cannot bypass the instrumentation.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-fable-5:Claude Code
ILSpy resolves an assembly's references against the target framework it
detects from the TargetFrameworkAttribute. When that attribute is missing,
wrong, or the user wants to force a different framework, there was no way to
hint the correct one, so references could resolve against the wrong runtime
pack or framework directory.
A LoadedAssembly can now carry a TargetFrameworkIdOverride that short-circuits
detection (it is the single value every LoadedAssembly-based resolution path
reads), is persisted in the assembly-list XML, and is carried across a reload
so a runtime change re-resolves against the new framework. The "Set Target
Framework" context-menu entry edits it through a dialog with a free-form text
box and an always-visible list of common monikers to pick from (the app forces
overlay popups, so a dropdown would be clamped inside the small dialog); input
is validated and converted from the short TFM users know (net48) to the long
FrameworkName form the resolver consumes (.NETFramework,Version=v4.8) via
NuGet. The direct DetectTargetFrameworkId callers in the decompiler core
(project export, language version) intentionally keep reading the real
attribute; only reference resolution is overridden.
Resurrects a 2020 prototype (branch tfmoverride) re-implemented against the
current ILSpyX/Avalonia code, whose surrounding structures no longer matched.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-8:Claude Code
When the user removes an assembly while a decompile is still in flight,
the title-refresh paths (spinner tick, post-Task.Run InvokeAsync,
StopSpinner) walk node.Text -> LoadedAssembly.Text ->
metadata.GetAssemblyDefinition().Version, reading directly from the
PE file's MemoryMappedFile. AssemblyList.Unload calls Dispose
synchronously and unmaps that file; any continuation that lands on the
UI thread after Dispose dereferences freed pages and the CLR reports
the AV through FailFastIfCorruptingStateException -- a catch block
cannot intervene in .NET 5+.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-7:Claude Code
Two ordering fixes for startup so the user sees the assembly tree before any
decompiled content shows up in the document area, and so the lazy-load story
actually holds.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-7:Claude Code
Replace LoadedAssembly's eager Task.Run(LoadAsync) with a Lazy<Task<LoadResult>> so
construction is free and the load only starts on the first GetLoadResultAsync /
await / .Result access. Active assembly's load fires from the saved-path restore
and runs without competition; everything else stays cold until either the user
expands a tree node OR the cooldown sweep fires.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-7:Claude Code
MetadataFile now declares IDisposable using the canonical pattern
(public non-virtual Dispose() + protected virtual Dispose(bool)).
PEFile and WebCilFile become sealed and override Dispose(bool) to
release the PEReader and MemoryMappedViewAccessor they own;
ResourcesFile is also sealed. PortableDebugInfoProvider disposes the
MetadataReaderProvider it owns. LoadedAssembly implements IDisposable
and disposes both the loaded MetadataFile and the debug-info provider.
AssemblyList.Unload / Clear / ReloadAssembly / HotReplaceAssembly now
dispose the LoadedAssembly instances they evict, fixing a resource leak
where every "Reload Assembly" held the previous PEReader (and the
underlying file handle / memory-mapped view) alive until GC eventually
finalized it.
The disposal contract terminates at the AssemblyList tier: downstream
holders of MetadataFile (MetadataModule, DecompilerTypeSystem,
AssemblyListSnapshot, ...) hold borrowed references rather than owned
ones, so making the base IDisposable does not cascade into CA1001 /
CA2213 warnings elsewhere.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Extend class LoadedAssembly to detect and load compressed Xamarin assemblies if direct loading of assembly fails.
Requires Nuget pkg K4os.Compression.LZ4 for LZ4 decompression.
* We no longer maintain the weird `loadingAssemblies` global state.
* AssemblyList now internally handles multiple concurrent load requests for the same filename.
* AssemblyList.assemblies and its lock is now private to the AssemblyList.
* Removed a questionable caching layer (cache was per-AssemblyList, but was caching the result of a per-LoadedAssembly lookup function.
* Replaced static DisableAssemblyLoad() with bool-parameter on GetAssemblyResolver() call.
DecompilerTypeSystem uses this to resolve/load multiple assemblies in parallel.
Unfortunately this doesn't gain us any performance yet in ILSpy because there we have a global assembly-loader-lock :(
Siegfried Pammer
Christoph Wille
Peter Crabtree
Christian Prähauser
Daniel Grunwald
riQQ
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