What is the equivalent of Assembly.GetEntryAssembly() in .NET Core?

Question

In .net framework we could get the starting assembly using:

Assembly.GetEntryAssembly();

But that is removed from .NET Core. Also there is no AppDomain. How can I get access to the entry assembly in .NET Core and Windows Universal applications?

(I need to find all of its embedded resource keys)

Vespid

try Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly() – Goldshell

That doesn't exist either. Those static methods are removed from Assembly class in .NET core! – Vespid

Answer 1

Assembly.GetEntryAssembly() is available in .NET Standard 1.5, but not in versions 1.0 through 1.4. If you are only developing .NET Core and Universal Windows applications, version 1.5 should be sufficient for your needs.

If I remember correctly, AppDomain is destined to appear in .NET Standard 2.0. It is not available now.

Mettah

Thanks for your suggestion. But my library is shared between Xamarin for iOS and Android too which use Mono. – Vespid

As far as I know, Xamarin iOS and Android should also be able to use .NET Standard 1.5 assemblies. – Mettah

Answer 2

One important difference between .NET Framework and .NET Core (including .NET 5-8 etc.) is that when using .NET Core, in a console or Windows application which you launch by starting the ".exe" file, the GetEntryAssembly and all other methods return the ".dll" file, and not the ".exe" file as it used to be the case in .NET Framework. This can introduce a silent bug if you use something like Assembly.Location, etc. when upgrading from .NET Framework to .NET Core.

Walt

Answer 3

I ended up injecting the entry assembly into the library.

In the library:

class AssemblyHelper 
{
     // This can be called instead of Assembly.GetEntryAssembly()
     public static Func<Assembly> GetEntryAssembly;
}

In the start-up application (which uses the library):

class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        AssemblyHelper.GetEntryAssembly = () => typeof(Program).GetAssembly();

        ....
    }
}

Vespid

Sadly, this doesn't work in a library that knows nothing about Program. – Lurlinelusa

True. But you can provide this way of injecting the assembly and add "setup documentation" for the users of your library to add the code above to their own Program. Not ideal, but doable. – Vespid

This doesn't even try to answer the question. Altough it might be what you did to solve your problem, it's not very helpful for people coming here and expecting to find a solution. Anders answer is much better. – Tav

Thanks Jim. I marked his reply as the correct answer. – Vespid

Answer helped me though on a legacy project, so +1 – Superposition