Is it possible to reload a debug assembly and re-attach to process?

If I attach to a application's process and debug, then stop debugging, and recompile a dependent assembly, is it possible to add logic to my application which does an unload/re-load to that assembly such that I'll be ab开发者_开发技巧le to re-attach to the process and debug again without re-starting?

I suppose technically it might be possible, if your code were written to load the assembly dynamically (like a plugin assembly), but even then it'd only work if no classes/resources from the assembly had been used. So, for all realistic purposes, no: what you launch is what you're running.

That said, what you're trying to attempt sounds pretty close to what edit-and-continue does in Visual Studio. Have you tried that? Why do you need to recompile the assembly in the first place?

You could try Shadow Copy Cache. I know it from its use in NUnit, where you can change your test\tested code without restarting the NUnit GUI.