I've followed every guide I could find related to ILMerge in order to merge a third party .dll into a custom Dynamics CRM plugin (.dll) so that I may use the functionality.
I am writing a Dynamics CRM plugin that will take a .docx document, populate some information, and add an annotation (Note) to an associated entity. Retrieving the document template and creating an annotation work fine. so, I know my plugin is sound (registers and runs okay).
However, once I attempt to use DocumentFormat.OpenXml to manipulate my document template, I get an error that Dynamics CRM:
Could not load file or assembly 'DocumentFormat.OpenXml, Version=2.5.5631.0......."
After doing some research, I found that I needed to "merge" the DocumentFormat.OpenXml.dll into my plugin .dll.
I installed MSBuild.ILMerge.Task (and ILMerge) in VS2015. During the build process, I now get two messages "Transitive merge" and "Merged assemblies: pathname\my.dll; pathname\DocumentFormat.OpenXml.dll". It seemed to do what I needed. However, when I update the plugin with the new .dll, I get the same "Could not load file or assembly" error message.
I am unable to find any documentation that could further help in ensuring that my referenced DocumentFormat.OpenXml.dll actually gets merged into my target .dll.
I am unable to find any documentation that could further help in ensuring that my referenced DocumentFormat.OpenXml.dll actually gets merged into my target .dll.
You can use any decompiler (ex: dotPeek) to see the content of merged dll & verify.
when I update the plugin with the new .dll, I get the same "Could not load file or assembly" error message.
Instead of updating the existing plugin in PRT, unregister the existing & register the new assembly with merged dll.