Re: [Ikvm-developers] Dynamic loading woes (again)

[Michael K. <mi...@sa...>]

Thanks for the prompt reply (brilliant software, brilliant support, shame
about the documentation...)
> 
> The issue here is that 0.32 uses a fixed (and predictable) 
> class loading model and no longer searches all the loaded 
> assemblies (which was both unpredictable and inefficient). 
> There are three possible work around that I can think of:
> 
> 1) This may or may not work, depending on what the context 
> class loader is, but you can statically link saxon8sa.dll to 
> Transform.exe, that way it becomes part of the class loader 
> graph of Transform.exe and when the system class loader is 
> used (which will be the assembly class loader associated with 
> the application's main executable), it should be able to find 
> the class (because an assembly class loader searches the 
> corresponding assembly and all assemblies it *directly* references).
> (Note that the C# compiler does not actually add an assembly 
> reference if you use /r but don't use any type in the 
> assembly, so you must add some code that actually touches a 
> type in the assembly.)

The main reason I haven't done this is because Transform is open source and
saxon8sa is commercial software. Having a static reference would stop people
being able to recompile the code (I don't know whether it would lead to any
run-time problems as well). But I may have to go down this route.
> 
> 2) Write a custom class loader that knows how to load 
> com.saxonica.validate.SchemaAwareConfiguration and use 
> Thread.setContextClassLoader to set it.

That sounds scary, but perhaps it's territory that I need to explore.
> 
> 3) Use Class.forName() with an assembly qualified name.
> 

This sounds the easiest approach, but what exactly is an "assembly qualified
name"?

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/