How to reference the native Onnxruntime.dll in my app installed from Nuget in my app .Instead of from System32

Question

Requirements:-

1. Hi i have created a .net framework class library. It uses inference session from ML.Onnxruntime nuget package to load a model and run inferencing on it.
2. Now i am using that library in my WPF UI app. I don't want to install ML.onnxruntime in my wpf UI app as it is already installed in library. In UI app i will only pass some model test data (some sentences) to the the class library . That library should handle it and run inferencing.

Error facing:-

1. Not able to achieve 2nd point. As my UI app is forcing me to download onnxruntime Ml package from nuget.
2. If i install it then i am not able to run this UI app on other laptop(having windows 10). Their i guess it is referring to the onnxruntime.dll present in System32. Which is wrong. So help to me achieve my requirements.

Answer 1

1. Copy DLLs: Ensure onnxruntime.dll is copied to your WPF app’s output directory.
2. Set DLL Path: Add this code at the start of your app to set the DLL search path:

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

[DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
static extern bool SetDllDirectory(string lpPathName);

string path = Path.Combine(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, "path_to_your_dlls");
SetDllDirectory(path);
																																														

3. Deploy Properly: Ensure all necessary DLLs are included in your deployment package.

This should help your app reference the correct onnxruntime.dll.