Using unsigned DLLs in project that is signed

Question

I have a 3rd party DLL that I need to use in my application. My project is signed with an SNK so therefore I cannot use these unsigned DLLs without signing them.

I tried to use ildasm.exe as explained here but I get error messages when attempting to sign the DLL as the DLL contains unmanaged code. The error message I get is "the resulting PE file is unusable" (the DLL uses P/Invoke calls).

Any ideas what I can do here?

Answer 1

The simplest approach is to rebuild the DLL with a key. You haven't told us anything about the 3rd party DLL... if it's a commercial library, I'd expect the company involved to be happy to give you a signed binary. If it's an open source library, you can do that yourself.

If you have no way of getting hold of a "normal" signed binary, perhaps you could give more details about the situation?

Answer 2

If you can't get a signed version of the third-party assembly and need this to get working, a way out would be to load the dll dynamically at run-time.