Question

I wrote a quick console application that uses SharePoint dll files. If I attempt to run it on a machine that doesn’t have said dll files, the application immediately crashes upon opening.

I’m definitely a newbie, but I would prefer if there was a way the application could tell the user they are using it on a wrong machine, before it hard crashed. Is there a way of doing this other than writing a second application to scan for dependencies, to be run prior to the application in question? If I put the code that needs dependencies in a separate class, that isn’t instantiated until the application has checked it is on the correct computer, will the application still fail immediately on opening? Surely someone has figured out a workaround for this sort of situation.

Answer 1

How about wrapping the load of that dll into:

 try { 
      Assembly.Load(..);
 }
 catch(TypeLoadException ex) {

         //Let the user know which type from what dll was not loaded.
 }

You will have to load that dll at runtime to actually do that though.