I dislike using deprecated commands or APIs when I know that there’s a more modern method of performing an action. I also generally prefer to use Windows PowerShell as a .NET scripting language, rather than constantly relying on cmdlets. To be sure, I use a balance of both concepts, since cmdlets can save a whole lot of coding a lot of the time.
Every time I want to load an assembly into PowerShell, the first thing that pops into my mind is using the LoadWithPartialName() method:
1 | [Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName(); |
Unfortunately Microsoft recommends against using that static method, as it is deprecated, and recommends use of other methods such as LoadFile() or Load() like:
1 | [Reflection.Assembly]::Load(StronglyTypedAssemblyName); |
In the interest of not breaking my conscience, I would like to use this method, but the problem then becomes that I have to constantly figure out what the strongly-typed name of the assembly I want is. To help solve this problem, I decided to write a PowerShell script that extracts information from the .NET assemblies in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC), since those are generally the most common ones I’ll need to reference.
If you’re using a workstation in an enterprise environment, there may be