OT: ILMerge

30 Mar 2005 10:08 PM

rawCoder

Hi All,

Just needed to know what you guys think about ILMerge.
Is it mature enough?
Does it pose any performance loss?
Is it gonna be part of VS.NET in future?
When should I and when should I not use it ?

Any idea is welcome.
rawCoder

http://research.microsoft.com/~mbarnett/ilmerge.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=22914587-B4AD-4EAE-87CF-B14AE6A939B0&displaylang=en

31 Mar 2005 12:32 AM

Mohammad

rawCoder wrote:

> Just needed to know what you guys think about ILMerge.
> Is it mature enough?
> Does it pose any performance loss?
> Is it gonna be part of VS.NET in future?
> When should I and when should I not use it ?

I won't comment on the quality of ILMerge since I haven't used it, but
allow me to offer the following advice:

When should you use it? Never.

Why? Well, because 99.9996% of the time it helps you to solve a
non-problem.

Here's a typical scenario: You're a developer working on an
application. Being the good developer that you are, you organize the
source code into different assemblies to ease the process of coding,
testing, debugging, and distribution of updates. You finish your
program, and everything is honky-dory... Until you demonstrate your
masterpiece to some middle manager. He would make a few worthless
comments which usually include issues with colors and control
positioning up to 0.5 pixles precision... After all is said and done,
the schmuck in question might note that there are several DLL's in the
installation directory, which he'll ask about. You'll kindly and slowly
explain what's going on to him, after which he'll fake a seizure and
tell that this is totally unacceptable, as it would complicate the
deployment process. You'd explain, plead, beg, but to no avail, since
his power trip is in hight tide.

Once you go back to your cubicle, you'd consider merging the all the
source code files into one big project and compiling it into a single
assembly, but then you'll remember the third party tools that you have
used, which you don't have the source code for. Only then you'll
remember ILMerge.

31 Mar 2005 6:54 AM

Cor Ligthert

Mohammad,

A nice description of a development project.
(This were my first experiences as developer as well)

One of the solutions when you know that this will happen, be sure that you
have some things that you direct can change and will catch the eye and don't
forget to tell that it is impossible to change however that you will try.

:-)

Cor

31 Mar 2005 6:12 PM

Mohammad

One strategy that I find quite useful is to have a splash screen for
Windows based applications or a header for web based application, and
on either the splash screen or the header put the following in lava-red
glowing colors:

People's Republic of Cuba
Department of Political Prisoners' Containment and re-Alignment
Services.

That is sure to catch any middle manager's attention. Then he would
have a good enough reason to have his token powertrip, and life goes
on.