Resolve 3rd party dll path at runtime

Question

I'm developing an application that depends on some 3rd party dll's (it's actually a plugin to the 3rd party application, and I receive COM objects implementing certain interfaces declared in those dll's). My project contains references to those dll's locally exist on the dev machine, but I want to avoid wraping them inside my installer (for size and legal considerations).

Instead, my installer requires that the dll's are already existing on the target machine, and their path is saved to a text file next to my executable assembly.

How can I use this file to link to the dll's on run time?
Or is it better to add an environment variable during installation and use it instead (how can it be done)?

Answer 1

Using project references, I do not know of a way to have dlls in an arbitrary location. Typically I've handled this issue using an installer, like InstallAware, prompted the user for the 3rd party location, and copied the dlls into my projects folder at the same relative location I chose in my solution file.

If this is improbable for you, you can always load the dlls and create instances of the classes yourself by hand using Assembly.LoadFrom and Activator.CreateInstance .

I hope this helps.