How do I get the version of an assembly without loading it?

Question

One small function of a large program examines assemblies in a folder and replaces out-of-date assemblies with the latest versions. To accomplish this, it needs to read the version numbers of the existing assembly files without actually loading those assemblies into the executing process.

Answer 1

I found the following in this article.

using System.Reflection; using System.IO;  ...  // Get current and updated assemblies AssemblyName currentAssemblyName = AssemblyName.GetAssemblyName(currentAssemblyPath); AssemblyName updatedAssemblyName = AssemblyName.GetAssemblyName(updatedAssemblyPath);  // Compare both versions if (updatedAssemblyName.Version.CompareTo(currentAssemblyName.Version) <= 0) {     // There's nothing to update     return; }  // Update older version File.Copy(updatedAssemblyPath, currentAssemblyPath, true);