Diff tool for comparing .NET assemblies in the Rider IDE

V. I. Miroshnikov

St. Petersburg State University

Abstract: A .NET developer occasionally needs to compare compiled programs or assemblies, e.g., when updating versions of third-party libraries or when working with their own binary files. However, the existing tools have some significant drawbacks, for example they don't support comparison of .NET Core assemblies. In this paper we reviewed different types of .NET assemblies and, taking into account their structure, developed and integrated into Rider IDE our own Assembly Diff tool which considers the disadvantages of the existing tools and expands the comparison possibilities. We presented several variants of comparison tool presentation and implementation and chose the most functional one in the form of a comparison tree, for which we developed and described special algorithms allowing to take into account semantic features of .NET types.

Keywords: Assembly Difference, assembly diff tool, .NET assembly diff, Rider, assembly comparison, Exe/Dll diff, comparing compiled assemblies

Language: English

DOI: 10.15514/ISPRAS-2022-34(3)-3