.NET Reference Explorer

The .NET Reference Explorer (in short RefExplorer) is a Windows software to display dependencies between .NET assemblies.

You can use it for verifying your software architecture or for finding bugs. The result is a directed graph which shows the referenced assemblies and if they could be successfully loaded. Dependencies to legacy DLLs (via P/Invoke) are also displayed.

<table> <tr><th>Binary Download:</th><td><a href="../../releases/download/v1.6/RefExplorer_1.6.zip"><strong>RefExplorer_1.6.zip</strong></a> (2 MB)</td></tr> <tr><th>Operating System:</th><td>Windows 7 or newer</td></tr> <tr><th>License:</th><td><a href="/LICENSE?raw=true">MIT</a></td></tr> </table>

It is very easy to use: Just add the assembly you want to inspect as entry point. You even can add a complete folder or assemblies from the global assembly cache (GAC).

If any references are corrupt, a detailed error message gets displayed and the position is accordingly marked in the graph.

Development Environment

The solution can be built with Visual Studio 2013. The necessary dependencies are downloaded automatically via NuGet.

src\BuildRelease.bat builds the whole solution, merges the assemblies and stores the binaries in a ZIP file. Before it is executed, 3p\MSBuildCommunityTasks should be copied to C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild.