I have a .NET project that’s always been built/run by/on 32 bit machines. I got a new a 64 bit computer and am trying to tackle the task of getting it working there. The build script is in nant, and at one point we compile some boo code using the nant task. The boo code references our core DLL, which is built from c# source earlier in the build process.
I’ve tried two things: build it to run in 32bit mode and build it to run in 64bit mode. By using corflags on several programs (including booc), I was able to build the project built in 32bit mode, but ended up with a bunch of downstream issues at runtime. So I need to get it built in 64bit mode, which I think is preferable anyway.
According to the nant/booc source code, the booc nant task calls the booc.exe in-process using the CLR’s Process class, so (I think) it should inherit 32bitness or 64bitness from the parent process. That doesn’t reflect what I’m seeing, though.
Here’s what I’ve done:
- Used the 64bit version of powershell to invoke nant
- Specified platform=’x64′ on my tasks. I feel like I shouldn’t have to do this because anycpu should be fine, but it seems to make a difference.
Here’s the error I’m getting:
[booc] Compiling 5 files to 'C:\dev\build\MyProjectBoo.dll'. [booc] BCE0106: Failed to access the types defined in assembly 'MyProject, Version=5.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' - (C:\dev\build\MyProject.dll):Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information. [booc] is not a valid Win32 application. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800700C1) [booc] is not a valid Win32 application. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800700C1) [booc] . [booc] 1 error(s). Which means, according to the booc source code, ‘I tried to reflectively list the types in your referenced assembly but failed’. I don’t know if that means, ‘I think I’m 32bit but these are 64bit dlls’ or what, and I’m very confused.
Any ideas on how I can get this to work?
Update after some work, I’ve discovered that the issue has nothing to do with boo. I wrote a quick c# program that reflectively loads the dll and it breaks in the same way. So for some reason, no matter what I set as the platform (x86, x64 or anycpu), I can’t load it reflectively on an x64 machine. So not really boo’s fault. So I’m going to dig into this and repost if I have a better question.
Newer Update Turns out that one of my main DLL’s third party dependencies insists on being in a 32 bit environment, even though it isn’t built with corflags. This causes assembly.GetTypes() fail in 64 bit mode.
The problem is dependencies on third-party DLL’s that require 32 bit mode, which is possible even if they don’t have corflags set.