16.2 Analyzing Assemblies with Reflector
You’ll often need to understand how a class, method, or entire assembly fits into your overall system. Maybe you’re reliant upon a third-party library and you’re not sure exactly what it depends on. Perhaps a legacy chunk of your own code wasn’t as well documented as you’d like, so you’re not sure what features of the API you can use. You’re left with an unclear picture of how parts of your system interact with each other and the capabilities offered—never a good situation.
Lutz Roeder’s Reflector can help clear up situations like this. Reflector lets you explore any .NET assembly to find its dependencies and callers, or dive down and explore an entire assembly. Additionally, you can use tools within Reflector to decompile an assembly to see how the code was written.
| |
|---|---|
Tool | Reflector |
Version covered | 4.2.42.0 |
Home page | |
Power Tools page | |
Summary | A great tool for exploring APIs in an assembly and learning more about how that assembly is used |
License type | Freeware |
Online resources | Bug tracker, message board |
Supported Frameworks | .NET 1.0, 1.1, 2.0;Compact Framework (CF) 1.0, 2.0 |
Related tools in this book | ILDASM, DILE, Reflector.Diff, Peli’s Reflector Addins |
Getting Started
The Reflector download is a simple .zip containing a Readme file and the actual executable. Drop the ...
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