Unloading the Assembly loaded with Assembly.LoadFrom()

Question

I need to check the time amount to run GetTypes() after loading the dll. The code is as follows.

Assembly assem = Assembly.LoadFrom(file); sw = Stopwatch.StartNew(); var types1 = assem.GetTypes(); sw.Stop(); double time1 = sw.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds; 

I'd like to unload and reload the dll to check the time to spend in running GetTypes() again.

• How can I unload it? assem = null is good enough?
• Is there an explicit way to call garbage collector to reclaim the resource allocated to assem?

Answer 1

Can you use another AppDomain?

AppDomain dom = AppDomain.CreateDomain("some");      AssemblyName assemblyName = new AssemblyName(); assemblyName.CodeBase = pathToAssembly; Assembly assembly = dom.Load(assemblyName); Type [] types = assembly.GetTypes(); AppDomain.Unload(dom); 

Answer 2

Instead of using LoadFrom() or LoadFile() you can use Load with File.ReadAllBytes(). With this it does not use the assembly file but will read it and use read data.

Your code will then look like

Assembly assem = Assembly.Load(File.ReadAllBytes(filePath)); sw = Stopwatch.StartNew(); var types1 = assem.GetTypes(); sw.Stop(); double time1 = sw.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds; 

From here We cannot unload the file unless all the domains contained by it are unloaded.

Hope this helps.:)