MEF Runtime Plugin Swapping

Introduction Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) is a solution by Microsoft to build applications from reusable components which can be discovered, reused and composed. It is best suited for applications which need plug-in kind of support.  Problem MEF provides attributed programming model. Using the predefined attributes on desired components MEF makes plug-in handling very easy. While most of the things are handled automatically, some situation may arise where one need to take extra steps. One such situation is “On the Fly” modification/deletion of existing plug-ins in an application. In this blog, we will be focusing on this particular requirement in MEF projects - “Swapping out MEF enabled DLL on the fly” Solution The solution to the problem is “Shadow copying MEF enabled dlls”. To describe the solution, Lets go through a sample application. To understand the application, I assume the reader has basic understanding of MEF core concepts like – composable [&hellip