Getting current assembly location returns empty string

[Scellow]

            var asm = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
            Console.WriteLine($"Location: {asm.Location}");

Version: 026c934

Output: Location:

Expected (.net core 2.0): Location: C:\Users\Scellow\dev\test\bin\Debug\netcoreapp2.0\test.dll

OS: Win 10 x64

[MichalStrehovsky]

What do you need this information for?

After native compilation, the assembly no longer exists on the file system (all assemblies get compiled into a single EXE file). We return an empty string because it's a valid return value and better than throwing an exception (e.g. it will be an empty string when the assembly was loaded from a byte array on the CLR).

[MichalStrehovsky]

The most common use cases we have seen is when people call this to get a path to the app's directory. AppContext.BaseDirectory is a better API to do that.

If you really need a name of a file that no longer exists, you could construct it with Path.Combine(AppContext.BaseDirectory, asm.ManifestModule.Name)

[Scellow]

I use a library and they use that to set the working directory in a static constructor :/, i think they do that because .net core applications set the Project directory as a working directory

But thanks to your explanation i understand now, and it make sense :)

[jkotas]

This can be worked around now by adding:

AppContext.SetSwitch("Switch.System.Reflection.Assembly.SimulatedLocationInBaseDirectory", true);

to Main method of the application. This will cause Assembly.Location to returns paths to (non-existent) files in AppContext.BaseDirectory.

[zgramana]

Needed to use this workaround for using Grpc.Core as it uses Assembly.Location to locate its native shared lib.