Reference to System.Windows.Browser in WP7.1 app

kal_ahmed · Joined: 19 Apr 2012 Posts: 10

Hi,

I just got started with the demo version of SmartAssembly yesterday and I have hit a problem when processing an assembly targeted at the Windows Phone 7.1 profile of Silverlight. The assembly I'm processing is a class library which is intended for our customers to use to access our APIs (i.e. it is a DLL)

The assembly processes through SmartAssembly without generating any error messages, but then when I try and use the processed assembly in a sample application the compilation generates the warning:

Brian Donahue · Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 6344 Location: Red Gate Software

Hi Kal,
To sum up, you are protecting a DLL assembly using SmartAssembly, then referencing that assembly in another application, and when you compile that application, you get this error? So it is the Visual Studio compiler showing this error? Or have you integrated SmartAssembly into Visual Studio and the build is calling SmartAssembly, and smartassembly is reporting this error?
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kal_ahmed · Joined: 19 Apr 2012 Posts: 10

Hi Brian,

Brian Donahue · Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 6344 Location: Red Gate Software

Hi Kal,
Here is a list of things that won't work on WP7, at least where XNA is concerned (hopefully this is up-to-date):
http://www.red-gate.com/products/dotnet-development/smartassembly/assets/pdf/technology-feature-grid.pdf

I'd assume that if the assembly name appears in the saproj, then it's not an internal dependency and it's something that the assembly you are protecting relies on, allegedly. This doesn't mean it's directly referenced, it could be a child-of-a-dependency...

I suppose you could use .NET Reflector and put the assembly analyzer add-in on it to try to build up a graph of all the dependencies of the assembly.
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kal_ahmed · Joined: 19 Apr 2012 Posts: 10

Hi Brian,

I'm really only looking to obfuscate at the moment. I left error reporting turned off and I don't even have the option to enable feature reporting in the GUI. I'm not attempting to embed any of the dependencies and I've tried both with the dependencies all merged and without any dependencies merged and get the same error either way.

I've browsed the assembly dependencies in both .NET Reflector and dotNetPeek and I haven't found a reference to System.Windows.Browser either in my assembly or any of the dependencies - and all the dependencies reference .NET assemblies from the WindowsPhone71 profile of Silverlight 4, so I'm pretty sure there is no way they possibly could reference System.Windows.Browser as its not part of the WindowsPhone71 profile.

Any pointers ? Below is the content of my .saproj file, perhaps this helps ?
Note that in the GUI I have definitely turned off Automated Error Reporting, even though the template is there in the .saproj.

Brian Donahue · Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 6344 Location: Red Gate Software

I wish I could help, Kal, but every Silverlight sample I have on my computer has a reference to System.Windows.Browser in it already before SmartAssembly. Can you please send the unprotected assembly to support@red-gate.com, quoting F0059434 in the subject?
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Brian Donahue · Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 6344 Location: Red Gate Software

Ok, I think I have it. Create a new Silverlight class library, hack out all of the Windows namespace by hand, compile it, and run SmartAssembly. It creates those two references for the assembly output and I don't know why. I'll try to get an answer from the development team.
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Brian Donahue · Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 6344 Location: Red Gate Software

In the meantime, can you please explain how you get into this situation?

I can, for instance, reference the DLL and use it in a Silverlight application. However, I still need System.Windows and System.Windows.Browser to have any UI at all in a Silverlight app. Maybe the methodology for Windows Phone is a bit different and I'm sorry to say I don't know a lot about phone development, this is why I am tackling it as a Silverlight problem.
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kal_ahmed · Joined: 19 Apr 2012 Posts: 10

Hi Brian,

Thanks for looking into this for me!

The main difference is my application is a Windows Phone application - and applications hosted in the browser are not supported (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff426931%28v=vs.95%29.aspx - Unsupported Features). The entire System.Windows.Browser namespace is not available on Windows Phone (you can see this in the SDK docs when you check the version information - see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd470087%28v=vs.95%29.aspx - Using the Reference Documentation).

So I would expect everything to be fine with a "regular" Silverlight app, but not with a Windows Phone app.

I'm wondering if one or more of the SmartAssembly.* assemblies are actually regular Silverlight. I am currently using an eval version, and so I wonder if you have some Silverlight GUI that pops up when the app runs and if it is this that pulls in the System.Windows.Browser reference. Of course, I could be barking up totally the wrong tree, but might be worth checking with the dev guys.

Cheers

Kal

Brian Donahue · Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 6344 Location: Red Gate Software

Hi Kal,

Sorry for the diversion - Okay, I have Phone SDK and a smaple app form Microsoft (Tic-Tac-Toe) and used SmartAssembly on it. This does not add the reference to System.Windows.Browser.

So back to the drawing board!!!

I'll try to work out some way to figure out where this dependency is coming from and let you know.
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Red Gate Software Ltd.
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Brian Donahue · Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 6344 Location: Red Gate Software

I guess you could send us the SmartAssembly log - it will at least ensure all dependencies are loading from the WP7 profile folder:

Go to %programfiles%\red gate\smartassembly 6 and edit SmartAssembly.exe.config
Uncomment the bits to enable logging and save the file
Launch SmartAssembly
Go to %userprofile%\appdata\local\red gate\smartassembly 6
open SmartAssembly.log

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kal_ahmed · Joined: 19 Apr 2012 Posts: 10

Hi Brian,

Sorry for the delay in replying - I've been on-site for one of our customers all day today. However, I've no managed to reproduce this problem with the simplest possible configuration:

1) Fire up VS2010 and create a new solution - choose Visual C# > Silverlight for Windows Phone > Windows Phone Class Library. Note that there is no reference to System.Windows.Browser from this project.

2) Build the clean solution

3) Create a new project in SmartAssembly to obfuscate the library. I didn't change any of the default settings, just selected the DLL and output location and then hit build.

4) Close SmartAssembly and save the .saproj file when prompted.

This is the .saproj file content:

Brian Donahue · Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 6344 Location: Red Gate Software

It does look as if SA is convinced your assembly is Silverlight rather than WP7. For instance, on a windows phone assembly, you should see this in the log:

Brian Donahue · Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 6344 Location: Red Gate Software

If SmartAssembly detects the Version String of the first reference to mscorlib in your assembly as "Silverlight,Version=v4.0,Profile=WindowsPhone", then it will be treated as a Windows Phone assembly. So possibly you have multiple references to mscorlib or there is a problem with your compiler...
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Red Gate Software Ltd.
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kal_ahmed · Joined: 19 Apr 2012 Posts: 10

Hi Brian,

As I said in my last post, I am now just trying to obfuscate a completely empty new Windows Phone 7.1 class library project. So, there is *no* custom code in it, *no* assembly references other than the ones added by Visual Studio. VS shows that the mscorlib reference is to the Windows Phone 7.1 profile mscorlib.dll reference.

I tried editing the .saproj to remove all the references added by SA except for mscorelib, for which I then set a MandatoryPath property to point to the WindowsPhone71 mscorlib. After the build, SA has modified the .saproj file again - the MandatoryPath remains in the .saproj file after the build, but the additional reference to System.Web.Browser is back in there.

Are you saying that you cannot reproduce this problem with the steps I outlined in my previous post ? If not, do you have any idea at all why this behaviour might appear on my machines (plural, I have tried on two different development machines), but doesn't appear in your setup ?

Cheers

Kal