5.0.0

This marks the first major version bump since the rewrite of AsmResolver. A huge thanks to all the contributors and testers. Without them this release would not have been possible!

Summary

• Significant performance boost and memory consumption reductions across the board.
• Rudimentary read support for PDB files (both Windows PDB and Portable PDB).
• Various Quality-of-Life improvements of the API.
• Overall robustness improvements against malformed input binaries and/or edge-cases.

Full change log

New Features

• Add read / write support for PortablePDB metadata streams and tables (#348)
• Add a new WIP package called AsmResolver.Symbols.Pdb for reading and writing Windows PDB files using only managed code (#324, #326, #342, #368 (thanks @ds5678))
• Add the notion of IMemberClonerListeners, allowing for automatically post-processing cloned metadata (e.g., automatically injecting it into the target module) as the cloner is cloning metadata (#333, #337, #354, thanks @CursedLand)
• Add DotNetRuntimeInfo::IsNetCoreApp, IsNetFramework and IsNetStandard properties for easily identifying whether a module targets .NET Core, .NET Framework or .NET Standard (505da7a).
• Add SignatureComparer::Default (#366, thanks @ds5678)
• Add TypeDefinition::IsByRefLike (#358, #362)
• Make AsmResolver.DotNet trimmable (#304, thanks @ds5678)
• Add MetadataTable::IsSorted property (#348)
• DynamicMethodDefinition now has better support for dynamic methods that are initialized via DynamicILInfo (b0b13c8)
• Add convenience constructors for BinaryStreamReader that take a byte[] or a IDataSource alone (54c65ee).
• Add OriginalMetadataTokenProvider (#361)
• Add type.IsTypeOfUtf8 to avoid conversions from Utf8String to string (baf25ac)

Breaking Changes

• Make SignatureComparer immutable (#366, thanks @ds5678)
• Refactor class BlobReadContext to a mutable struct BlobReaderContext (#356, c0283c7).
• Change ISegment::UpdateOffsets's method signature (#236, #346)
• Remove ITlsDirectory::ImageBase and CodeSegment::ImageBase (#346)
• Remove SegmentReference::CanUpdateOffsets and SegmentReference::UpdateOffsets (#346)
• Add setter to TypeDefOrRefSignature::Type and GenericInstanceTypeSignature::Type (#338, thanks @JPaja)
• Move AsmResolver.DotNet.Dynamic into a separate nuget package (#304).
• Rename Entrypoint to EntryPoint (b6fa3ed).
• Rename OptionalHeaderMagic::Pe32 and Pe32Plus to PE32 and PE32Plus (d954be0).
• Let LazyVariable lock on itself (16367c1)
• Consolidate ContinuousMetadataRange and RedirectedMetadataRange to a single struct MetadataRange (3bb6b6a)
• Let OneToManyRelation return a ValueSet with a struct enumerator instead of a generic ICollection (07b09c3)
• Change type of MemberClonerContext::Importer to CloneContextAwareReferenceImporter.
• Many constructors of metadata members taking a name parameter are now of type Utf8String instead of string (baf25ac, 5d8cb88).
• Rename FullNameGenerator to MemberNameGenerator. This class has a new layout and is not API compatible with the old version (#386).

Performance Improvements

• Precomputing capacity properties for lists containing read metadata reduced memory consumption by roughly 5%-10% (#316)
• Many small buffers and temporary memory streams are being reused during the writing process where possible. This reduces the number of allocations by up to 20% (#317).
• Various reader context types are now stack allocated (#356, c0283c7).
• Custom attribute signatures are now only read when absolutely necessary, preventing many unnecessary expensive type resolutions and thus many allocations (#336, #351).
• MethodImplementation now implements IEquatable<MethodImplementation>, drastically reducing allocations and increasing performance for large binaries with lots of interface implementations (d10cf47).
• Replace PE section lookup LINQ code with expanded for loop, drastically reducing allocations in general (1ff0a0f)
• OneToManyRelation now returns a ValueSet with a struct enumerator instead of an interface (07b09c3)
• Avoid many string allocations from Utf8String instances when resolving types and members (baf25ac)
• Avoid many allocations of traversed tokens during type signature parsing where possible, reducing memory consumption of the reader in general (c0283c7)
• Avoid duplication of Utf8String objects in StringStreamBuffer (533a911)
• Avoid allocation of many empty metadata value sets (especially for custom attributes), significantly reducing memory consumption (ce0a94f)
• Significantly improve performance of member.FullName and reduced memory consumption by up to 70% (#386)

Bug Fixes

• Modifications to a LazyList (and all its derivatives) are now guarded with locks to prevent concurrency issues (#364).
• Importing a nested type via System.Reflection now correctly imports the declaring type. This was especially a problem when converting DynamicMethods to a DynamicMethodDefinition. (#365)
• Local variables are now properly resolved from DynamicMethods initialized with DynamicILInfo.
• Reading and importing complex COR_ELEMENT_TYPE_INTERNAL types should be fixed.
• Various CIL body parsing improvements, allowing for better recovery of invalid method body code / data (#361)
• Metadata stream selection is now properly reflecting the behavior of the runtime for both compressed and EnC metadata (#352)
• ExpandMacros correctly expands ldarga.s and bge.un.s to their correct expanded forms (#322, thanks @N78750469)
• Importing via Reflection of MethodBases that use generic parameters of its declaring type in its signature should now be fixed.
• LPArrayMarshalDesriptor now correctly respects signatures with a null ArrayElementType (d9ef330).
• Fix stack overflow when trying to compute a token of a full sized public key of an assembly reference (#381, #382)
• The endfinally opcode correctly clears the stack during stack analysis (eb41d58)
• Sorted metadata tables are now stable sorts, ensuring order for metadata members such as custom attributes (#387)