Reference two equal assemblies, only public keys differ

Question

My Visual Studio 2008 project references two (external) assemblies (A+B) both of which happen to be referencing the same third assembly (C). However, assembly A expects assembly C to have a public key which is different from what assembly B expects it to have. Here's an example of the obvious exception: Could not load file or assembly 'Newtonsoft.Json, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=9ad232b50c3e6444' or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040) Ofcourse, I would not be able to put both versions of C (only differing by public key) in the same directory, as their filenames are equal. Second, I've found that using assembly binding from the configuration file only allows version mapping, not public key mapping. I've also tried to put one of the assemblies C in a separate directory and configure the CLR to search in that directory when loading assemblies. I could not get…

Accepted Answer

I wonder if `AssemblyResolve` would work:

```
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.AssemblyResolve += new ResolveEventHandler(CurrentDomain_AssemblyResolve);

static Assembly CurrentDomain_AssemblyResolve(object sender, ResolveEventArgs args)
{
    if (args.Name == "full name with old key")
    {
        return typeof(SomeTypeInReferencedAssembly).Assembly;
    }
    return null;
}
```

He're I'm assuming that you've referenced your preferred version and can use the type `SomeTypeInReferencedAssembly` to get the `Assembly`; you could also use:

```
return Assembly.Load("full name with new key");
```

I haven't tried it, but here I'm essentially saying "deploy one version of the dll, and when the system asks for the old one - lie".

Reference two equal assemblies, only public keys differ

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