is it possible to apply an aspect to an assembly without adding a reference in that assembly to the aspect?

Question

I wrote a an aspect called [NLogMethods] that logs method boundry to nlog, based on the example from Postsharp website.

I'd like to apply it to multiple DLLs in my infrastructure, for use in some of my applications.

in order to do this - I need to check out the project file of each DLL, add references to PostSharp, nlog and my aspects DLL, and add an attribute to AssemblyInfo.cs. I rather not do it, but rather do it centrally in the application, or in an external tool.

Is there a way to apply the aspects (to entire assemblies) without editing those assemblies?

Answer 1

You can setup a batch script to apply the aspect on build.

• http://programmersunlimited.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/exposing-internal-methods-in-3rd-party-assemblies-for-external-use/
• http://programmersunlimited.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/applying-aspects-to-3rd-party-assemblies-using-postsharp/

You can also build a custom targets file, but I can't seem to find the reference for that.