How to find all assemblies that reference a specific dll?

Question

I've a directory with a large number of dlls. I need to find all those that reference a specific dll.

I'm thinking about the following solution :

1. Loop the assemblies and invoke each one with ildasm
2. Dump the manifest into a text file
3. Search the text files for the required assembly name.

Yet this solution feels immensely wrong to me. Is there a better way to achieve it?

Answer 1

You could write a small tool for that purpose, using Reflection to find the referenced assemblies:

string[] fileNames = ...; // get all the filenames
foreach (string fileName in fileNames) {
    var assembly = System.Reflection.Assembly.ReflectionOnlyLoadFrom(fileName);
    var referencedAssemblies = assembly.GetReferencedAssemblies();

    foreach (var assemblyName in referencedAssemblies) {
        // do your comparison
    }
}