In this Weekly Tool Tip, I want to take another look at the features provided in .NET Reflector. Last week I gave a quick introduction to Reflector, and this week I want to show you how to manage your assembly lists with the tool.

If you recall, Reflector allows you to explore, browse and analyze any .NET assembly. This is great for the curious developer who wants to know implementation details of the .NET Framework or other third-party libraries, or is just interested in gaining more insight into her own projects. But your assembly list can quickly become unmanageable if you want to explore many different assemblies targeting different versions of the Framework. When I first started using Reflector I would just open assemblies as needed and remove them from the list as soon as I was done with them. But then I discovered Assembly List Management, a feature in Reflector which allows you to separate your assemblies into lists based on your own organizational criteria, allowing you to more easily manage them.

To create your own assembly list, click on File | Open List… from the main menu.

The Assembly List Management window will open, displaying all of your assembly lists. If you haven’t created one yet then there should only be one available, --Default—. To create a new list, click Add.

In this case, I’ve given my new list a name of OpenAccess ORM because I want it to contain all assemblies from Telerik’s OpenAccess ORM product. Once you’ve given your new list a name, open it by clicking Select.

Select the .NET Framework version you want your list to target and click OK. This option doesn’t matter if you don’t plan to use the new list to browse .NET assemblies.

Your new list will be populated with all assemblies from the .NET Framework version you selected. Unless you want to browse those assemblies specifically, you can go ahead and delete them.

To add one or more new assemblies to your list, click File | Open… and navigate to the assemblies on your local drive.

Once you have selected the assemblies you want to browse, they will appear in your new assembly list. You can now disassemble and analyze them from a more easily manageable list.

When you want to view another list, simply click on File | Open List… again to select another.

That’s how easy it is to manage assembly lists in .NET Reflector. Enjoy!