.NET Decompiling Tools: Part 1

by Santhakumar Munuswamy

  Posted on  02 February 2016

  .NET Tool Review

 

This article explains about decompiling tools for the .NET application and their features, how to use the tools to decompile assembly and assembly browser.

We are going to discuss about the Decompiling tools, features, pros and cons and how to use the tool to decompile the assembly and assembly browser. There are a lot of open source and paid tools in the market.

List of available tools as in the following:

  1. ILSpy
  2. dotPeek
  3. Telerik JustDecompiler
  4. .NET Reflector

ILSpy

We can discuss one of the interesting tool, ILSpy is an open source tool for .NET assembly browser and decompiler. It started development plan after Red Gate announced that the free version of .NET Reflector tool support ends 2011. It required a .NET Framework 4.0 to run the decompiler tool for the .NET application.

List of features as in the following:

  1. Assembly browsing
  2. IL Disassembly
  3. Support C# 5.0 async
  4. Decompilation to C#
  5. Support lambdas and yield return
  6. Sows XML documentation
  7. Decomilation to VB
  8. Saving of resources
  9. Save deccompiled assembly as .cs proj
  10. Search for types/metods/properties (substring)
  11. Hyperlink-based type/method/property navigation
  12. Base/Derived types navigation
  13. Navigation history
  14. BAML to XAML decompiler
  15. Save Assembly as C# project
  16. Find usages of field/method
  17. Extensible via plugins (MEF)
  18. Assembly Lists

We can easily download the ILSpy Tool from the ILSpy Website and unzip it, 

Go to the ILSpy Unziped folder location and double click the ILSpy application icon,

Go to File menu and click open menu and then browse the .NET assemblies “log4net”

 

Pros

  1. Open source and free tool.
  2. Easy to use interface and fast.
  3. It will be support the all features and working good.

Cons

  1. The UI isn’t seem to be good.
  2. No proper documentation.

We can discuss remaining .NET decompiler tools, features, pros & cons and so on in the next article.

Conclusion

This article helps you to understand ILSpy Decompiler tool with features, pros & cons and tool installation. Thank you for reading my articles. Kindly share your comments or suggestions

 

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About the Author
Santhakumar Munuswamy is a seasoned Solution Architect and Most Valuable Professional in Cloud /AI solutions. He has been experienced around 14 years in Solution designing, Software Product Development, Technical Documentation, Project Management for Web and Cloud Applications. He has experience in the IT industry across different domains (Automotive, Telecommunications, Healthcare, Logistics & Warehouse Automation, etc.) with roles in Technical Architect, Genesys Consultant, Technical Lead, Team Lead, and Developer. He has experienced in mentorship and coaching high potential developers.

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