Can Mono.Cecil replace a field with a property?

Question

Is it possible to use Cecil to replace a field with a property? Specifically:

// Replace this.
public static readonly Something Thing = new Something(...);

// With this.
private static readonly Something _Thing = new Something(...);

public static Something Thing
{
    get
    {
        // My goal is to insert some extra code here, which I can't do if it's a field.
        return _Thing;
    }
}

And if it is possible, can it be done efficiently? IE do I then need to go through every method in every type in every referencing assembly to replace every instance of Thing with a call to the property's get_Thing ?

It would be a lot easier if I could just have the user write public static Something Thing { get; } = new Something(...); public static Something Thing { get; } = new Something(...); so it's already a property, but I can't because Unity's compiler doesn't support property initialisers.

Note: I know next to nothing about working with IL.

Answer 1

Yes, using Cecil you can easily remove a field and add a Property with the same name, but that'll change your API surface and you'll have to look for all the

IL_XXXX:  ldsfld class [MyAssembly]Something [MyAssembly]MyClass::Thing

by

IL_XXXX:  call class [MyAssembly]Something class [MyAssembly]MyClass::get_Thing()

and doing that in the current assembly and all the assemblies referencing it.