OnLoad Event for a .Net DLL?

[David White]

Is there some way for code to be triggered for execution when a .Net 2 DLL file
is loaded? I need to perform some initialization work (like loading other
DLLs). Thanks.

[Mattias Sjögren]

David,

>Is there some way for code to be triggered for execution when a .Net 2 DLL file
>is loaded? I need to perform some initialization work (like loading other
>DLLs). Thanks.

Yes, but whether or not you can take advantage of it depends on which
language you're coding in.

Can't you do your initialization work in a static constructor?

Mattias

--
Mattias Sjögren [C# MVP] mattias @ mvps.org
http://www.msjogren.net/dotnet/ | http://www.dotnetinterop.com
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[David White]

Thanks. I would be coding in C# here. I do think I could manage to initialize
on first use of a contained class. But there may well be a substancial delay
between this DLL being loaded and a class inside it actually getting used. So I
was hoping that (a) I could use that time to do some work and (b) that if there
was some initialization error it could be reported sooner rather than later.

[Mattias Sjögren]

>Thanks. I would be coding in C# here.

OK, it doesn't support defining a module initializer.

>I do think I could manage to initialize
>on first use of a contained class. But there may well be a substancial delay
>between this DLL being loaded and a class inside it actually getting used.

Where's the DLL being loaded from? Keep in mind that the CLR doesn't
load assemblies until they are needed, so unless the client explicitly
uses something like Assembly.Load it will not be loaded in advance.