Dan Appleman explains in his latest post why the new MSDN Wiki is pretty much the coolest thing since online documentation.
I agree. This totally rocks. Check it out at: http://msdnwiki.microsoft.com/
Mr. Appleman’s open-source obfuscator also looks interesting – I’m investigating using it to obfuscate Code Toaster (see previous post(s) if you’re wondering what Code Toaster is). I’m trying to find a handy-dandy obfuscator for .Net that’s either open-source/free or relatively inexpensive. Most commercial obfuscators are just way too expensive for my budget (which right now is close to $0), however I don’t feel comfortable releasing the product of my blood sweat and tears completely unobfuscated.
The Dotfuscator Community Edition included with VS.Net 2005 is throwing some strange errors during obfuscation, which so far I haven’t been able to resolve. It’s saying it can’t find an assortment of .Net 1.0 system assemblies (like System.Windows.Forms.dll and the like). The trouble is, CodeToaster was developed using .Net 2.0, and there are no references in the project to any .Net 1.0 or 1.1 assemblies.
Dude!
The CodeToaster.exe executable, when reflected using Lutz Roeder’s Reflector, indeed contains references to both .Net 1.0 (note: 1.0, not 1.1) and 2.0 system assemblies (System.Windows.Forms, mscorlib, etc). Is VS.Net ‘05 automatically including references to multiple runtimes? I had no idea that was even possible.
I’ll keep poking at it with a sharp stick, and let everyone know what happens. In the meantime, if you know of any totally gnarly (and cheap) obfuscators, post a comment or shoot me an email.
rmblack at gmail dot com
Later.
September 14, 2006 at 7:53 pm
[...] In my MSDN Wiki post, I made reference to a little problem I’m having with obfuscating Code Toaster because VS.Net is adding references to multiple runtimes. Behold – a screenshot, so y’all don’t think I’ve gone completely off me rocker. [...]