Get dependent assemblies?

Question

Is there a way to get all assemblies that depend on a given assembly?

Pseudo:

Assembly a = GetAssembly();
var dependants = a.GetDependants();

Answer 1

If you wish to find the dependent assemblies from the current application domain, you could use something like the GetDependentAssemblies function defined below:

private IEnumerable<Assembly> GetDependentAssemblies(Assembly analyzedAssembly)
{
    return AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies()
        .Where(a => GetNamesOfAssembliesReferencedBy(a)
                            .Contains(analyzedAssembly.FullName));
}

public IEnumerable<string> GetNamesOfAssembliesReferencedBy(Assembly assembly)
{
    return assembly.GetReferencedAssemblies()
        .Select(assemblyName => assemblyName.FullName);
}

The analyzedAssembly parameter represents the assembly for which you want to find all the dependents.

Answer 2

Programatically, you can use Mono.Cecil to do this.

Something like this (note this won't work if the debugger is attached - e.g. if you run it from inside VS itself):

public static IEnumerable<string> GetDependentAssembly(string assemblyFilePath)
{
   //On my box, once I'd installed Mono, Mono.Cecil could be found at: 
   //C:\Program Files (x86)\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\gac\Mono.Cecil\0.9.4.0__0738eb9f132ed756\Mono.Cecil.dll
   var assembly = AssemblyDefinition.ReadAssembly(assemblyFilePath);
   return assembly.MainModule.AssemblyReferences.Select(reference => reference.FullName);
}

If you don't need to do this programatically, then NDepend or Reflector can give you this information.