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I'm refactoring some code and I've been hit with a dilemma.

Let's say we have the following scenario:

  1. A Core Assembly that contains many common interfaces and classes
  2. A Library Assembly that contains more specialized classes.

The Library Assembly references the Core Assembly. So far so good.

Due the fact that I'm refactoring this, there's a need for the Core Assembly to create objects that are declared in the Library Assembly.

OK, in order to avoid a circular reference problem, I decided to load the Library Assembly when needed (and it's needed only in a very specific point at the type initialization).

However, the loading performance of the whole thing plummeted to a dark abyss...

Does anyone know how to solve this?

Edited to add

Some people have requested the code I use to load... It's quite trivial, really.

/*
 * Load the Library Assembly
 */
Assembly asm = Assembly.Load("Library, PublicKeyToken=...");

/*
 * Get desired type
 */
Type   t = asm.GetType("Library.DesiredType")

/*
 * Get the default constructor
 */
var ctor = type.GetConstructor(new Type[] {})
starblue
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Paulo Santos
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    Really, performance became unacceptable by loading a single assembly at start-up? How big is this assembly? – Wim Coenen Jan 19 '10 at 02:05
  • It's ridiculous small: 52K (52,224 bytes) – Paulo Santos Jan 19 '10 at 02:09
  • If you're refactoring anyway, why not refactor the common dependencies into a 3rd assembly so you don't have a circular dependency problem and thus don't need to rely on dynamic loading? – Aaronaught Jan 19 '10 at 02:19
  • @Aaronaught OP used a poor wording to describe the situation, but aside from the scary words "circular reference", the scenario is a totally legit setup. – Rex M Jan 19 '10 at 02:29

1 Answers1

5

The assembly should only be loaded once into the AppDomain. Repeat calls to load assembly X should return the already-loaded assembly. Can you post the code for how you're attempting this? How are you measuring "performance"? Have you profiled your application to verify the performance hit is indeed coming from loading the assembly?

Rex M
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  • You're right, the problem wasn't the assembly loading. it was completely unrelated... So, back to the drawing board! – Paulo Santos Jan 19 '10 at 02:56