AppWithPlugin Demo

This sample demonstrates how to create an app with a plugin architecture, using the AssemblyDependencyResolver type and a custom AssemblyLoadContext to help load plugins with assembly dependencies.

About AssemblyDependencyResolver

Without using AssemblyDependencyResolver, it is extremely difficult to correctly load plugins that have their own dependencies.

By using AssemblyDependencyResolver along with a custom AssemblyLoadContext, an application can load plugins so that each plugin's dependencies are loaded from the correct location, and one plugin's dependencies will not conflict with another. This sample includes plugins that have conflicting dependencies and plugins that rely on satellite assemblies or native libraries.

Build and Run

1. Install .NET 7.0 or newer. The sample targets .NET 7.0, but support for all the features it uses was added in .NET Core 3.0.
2. Use the .NET SDK to build the project via dotnet build.
   • The AppWithPlugin project does not contain any references to the plugin projects, so you need to build the solution.
3. Go to the AppWithPlugin directory and use dotnet run to run the app.
   • You should see the app output a list of installed commands.
4. In the AppWithPlugin directory, use dotnet run commandName [commandName2...] where commandName1 and commandName2 and so on are names that were output in step 3. Note that you can run as many commands as you want at once.
   • You should see the app run the supplied commands, even when the commands have conflicting dependencies.