Adding MetadataReference to Roslyn vs. Microsoft.CodeAnalysis

Question

Roslyn version 1.2. * has a function called MetadataReference.CreateAssemblyReference() , which takes the display name of the assembly and returns the corresponding MetadataReference object. For example, I was able to add a link to various assemblies as follows:

 Compilation compilation = Compilation.Create("HelloWorld") .AddReferences(MetadataReference.CreateAssemblyReference("mscorlib"), MetadataReference.CreateAssemblyReference("System.Linq"), MetadataReference.CreateAssemblyReference("System.Data.Linq"), MetadataReference.CreateAssemblyReference("System.Data"), MetadataReference.CreateAssemblyReference("System.Data.DataSetExtensions"), MetadataReference.CreateAssemblyReference("System.Xml"), MetadataReference.CreateAssemblyReference("System.Xml.Linq"), MetadataReference.CreateAssemblyReference("System"), MetadataReference.CreateAssemblyReference("System.Core") //MetadataReference.CreateAssemblyReference("System.Core"), /*MetadataReference.CreateAssemblyReference("System")*/) .AddSyntaxTrees(tree); 

This, however, is not possible with the Microsoft.CodeAnalysis package (this is the last package that can be installed from Nuget). This package has several functions inside the MetadataReference - but they require either assembly or a file path.

Does the simpler function described above exist in new compiler packages?

Answer 1

You can load the assembly with the CLR loader and find out where it was downloaded from:

 typeof(DataSetExtensions).Assembly.Location