Background: At my company we are developing a bunch applications that are using the same core dll’s. These dll’s are using Spring.net’s IoC-container to wire things up (auto-wiring). All applications are using the same spring configuration file, and this configuration file points to many classes in many different dll’s. But not all application needs functionality from every dll. But because of the way IoC-containers works, all dll’s is loaded for Spring.net to examine the types and check what interfaces they implement and so on.
Core question: I understand that it’s better to just load the dll’s you really use. But is it really bad for memory usage just to load a managed dll? Or is it first then you are using classes in the dll and they are getting JIT’ed that the most memory are used?
If none of the code from the assembly is ever used, then eventually the pages from that assembly will be moved from memory into the page file in favour of actively used pages. In which case, the overall long-term effect is likely to be minor. Although, there will be a negative effect on startup time.