Question

When compiling, I always set it for Any CPU. However there are some customers that do not have a 64 bit version of a required binary, even when running on an x64 system. In these instances I have asked them to modify my binary with the corflags.exe /32BIT+ option:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms164699(VS.80).aspx

I would like to make this transparent and modify the binary myself during installation time if the 64 bit version is not present. I would prefer not to make a call to corflags.exe myself as that would mean I would need to redistribute the application which is not allowed as part of our shipping requirements.

So my question is; is there any way to modify this flag programatically myself, or alternatively to modify the binary directly (is it just setting a byte somewhere in the file itself)?

Answer 1

Why not just build your assemblies for both architectures (32-bit and 64-bit) specifically, include both in your installer, and then at install time, detect which version of this dependent assembly your client has and then install the appropriate architecture version of your application. This way there’s no messing around modifying binaries manually or needing to include corflags in your installer.