System.Reflection.Assembly.LoadFile Locks File

Question

I'm loading a DLL via System.Reflection.Assembly.LoadFile and reflecting over it's members in a plugin-esque system. I need to be able to update/overwrite these DLL while the system is running but it appears that after calling System.Reflection.Assembly.LoadFile the file is subsequently locked.
Does anyone know of a way to unlock the file?
I have read about loading the file in a separate appdomain? Are there any pitfalls to this approach?

Answer 1

If you use this:

 System.Reflection.Assembly.Load(System.IO.File.ReadAllBytes(path))

It will not lock the file.

Edit

---

While this works, it is not the best solution, but the better way of doing it is a lot more involved (too much for just pasting all the code here for it).

I have created a public repository on Github here with all the code for doing this properly:

Loading Assemblies without Locking by using Shadow Copying.

Answer 2

Use Microsoft.Cci included in Microsoft FxCop

Sample for version 1.35:

using Microsoft.Cci;
// [...]
AssemblyNode assembly = AssemblyNode.GetAssembly(path);