NOTE AsmSpy is now being maintained by Oleg Sych. The official repo is now here: github.com/olegsych/AsmSpy.

Many thanks to Oleg for taking on AsmSpy!

AsmSpy

A simple command line tool to view assembly references.

Install

Install from Chocolatey package:

C:\> choco install asmspy

Or download AsmSpy as a .zip here. The .zip file contains AsmSpy.exe.

How it works

Simply run AsmSpy giving it a path to your bin directory (the folder where your project's assemblies live).

AsmSpy D:\Source\sutekishop\Suteki.Shop\Suteki.Shop\bin

It will output a list of all conflicting assembly references. That is where different assemblies in your bin folder reference different versions of the same assembly.

Switches:

| Switch | Description | | --- | --- | | all | List all assemblies and references.<br> Supported formats: -a, --all | | nonsystem | Ignore system assemblies. <br> Supported formats: -n, --nonsystem | | noconsole | Do not show reference output on console.<br> Supported formats: -nc, --noconsole | | silent | Do not show any output, only warnings and errors will be shown.<br> Supported formats: -s, --silent | | dgml | Export dependency graph to a dgml file.<br> Supported formats: -dg <filename> | | dgml version | Show the assembly version on the label.<br> Supported formats: -dgsv, --dgshowversion | | dot | Export dependency graph to a DOT file.<br> Supported formats: -dt <filename> | | xml | Export dependency graph to a xml file.<br> Supported formats: -x <filename> | | rsw | Will only analyze assemblies if their referenced assemblies starts with the given value.<br> Supported formats: -rsw <string>, --referencedstartswith <string> | | e | Will exclude assemblies if they start with the given value. This option can be provided multiple times.<br> Supported formats: -e <string>, --exclude <string> | | tree | Write a dependency tree to the console.<br>Supported formats: -tr --tree | | treedepth | Limit tree depth (in compbinaison with --tree). Supported formats : -trd <int> --treedepth <int> | | treelabel | Add [Level n] label in tree view of dependencies. Supported formats -trl --treelabel | | i | Include subdirectories in search.<br> Supported formats: -i, --includesub | | c | Use the binding redirects of the given configuration file (Web.config or App.config) <br> Supported formats: -c <string>, --configurationFile <string> | | f | Whether to exit with an error code when AsmSpy detected Assemblies which could not be found <br> Supported formats. -f, --failOnMissing |

Examples

To see a list of all assemblies and all references, just add the 'all' flag:

AsmSpy D:\Source\sutekishop\Suteki.Shop\Suteki.Shop\bin --all

To check only a single assembly provide a path to the file:

AsmSpy D:\Source\sutekishop\Suteki.Shop\Suteki.Shop\bin\Suteki.Shop.dll

To ignore system assemblies, add the 'nonsystem' flag.

The output looks something like this:

Reference: System.Runtime.Serialization
	3.0.0.0 by Microsoft.ServiceModel.Samples.XmlRpc
	3.0.0.0 by Microsoft.Web.Mvc
	4.0.0.0 by Suteki.Shop
Reference: System.Web.Mvc
	2.0.0.0 by Microsoft.Web.Mvc
	3.0.0.0 by MvcContrib
	3.0.0.0 by MvcContrib.FluentHtml
	3.0.0.0 by Suteki.Common
	2.0.0.0 by Suteki.Common
	3.0.0.0 by Suteki.Shop
	2.0.0.0 by Suteki.Shop
Reference: System.ServiceModel.Web
	3.5.0.0 by Microsoft.Web.Mvc
Reference: System.Web.Abstractions
	3.5.0.0 by Microsoft.Web.Mvc

You can see that System.Web.Mvc is referenced by 7 assemblies in my bin folder. Some reference version 2.0.0.0 and some version 3.0.0.0. I can now resolve any conflicts.

Color coding is used to more easily distinguish any problems.

• Green - referenced assembly found locally, in the specified directory
• Yellow - referenced assembly not found locally, but found installed in the Global Assembly Cache
• Red - referenced assembly missing

Configure AsmSpy as an external tool in Visual Studio

Blog post here