CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.netvb.netreflection
Jakob Gade
Jakob Gade

Reputation: 12417

Compile date and time

Is there some clever way of getting the date and time of when the dll was built/compiled?

I’m using the assembly version numbering and reflection to retrieve and display this info when the app is deployed. But in some scenarios it would be more convenient to know when then dll was actually compiled rather than the auto incrementing version number. I don’t think the modified date on the dll file itself is reliable due to the way the app is deployed.

Dim assemblies = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies
Dim assemblyName As String
Dim assemblyVersion As String

For Each assembly In assemblies
  assemblyName = assembly.GetName.Name.ToString
  assemblyVersion = assembly.GetName.Version.ToString
  ' How to get the date/time of the build??
  ' ...
Next

Any suggestions?

Upvotes: 18

Views: 13184

Answers (3)

joshcomley
joshcomley

Reputation: 28838

What about:

new FileInfo(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location).LastWriteTime;

Upvotes: 1

Yousha Aleayoub
Yousha Aleayoub

Reputation: 5638

You can get it by this way:

File.GetLastWriteTime(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);

Returns DateTime object.

Upvotes: 7

M4N
M4N

Reputation: 96576

If you set the assembly version (usually in AssemblyInfo.cs) to Major.Minor.* (e.g. 1.0.*), then you can probably retrieve the build date at runtime with something like this:

var version = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().Version;
DateTime buildDate = new DateTime(2000, 1, 1)
    .AddDays(version.Build)
    .AddSeconds(version.Revision*2);

When using a * for the third and fourth part of the assembly version, then these two parts are set automatically at compile time to the following values:

  • third part is the number of days since 2000-01-01
  • fourth part is the number of seconds since midnight divided by two (although some MSDN pages say it is a random number)

Oh, and you have to take care of daylight saving time yourself (e.g. add one hour if it's daylight saving time).

Upvotes: 21

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