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Type Forwarding in the Common Language Runtime 

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Type forwarding allows you to move a type to another assembly without having to recompile applications that use the original assembly.

For example, suppose an application uses the Example class in an assembly named Utility.dll. The developers of Utility.dll might decide to refactor the assembly, and in the process they might move the Example class to another assembly. If the old version of Utility.dll is replaced by the new version of Utility.dll and its companion assembly, the application that uses the Example class fails because it cannot locate the Example class in the new version of Utility.dll.

The developers of Utility.dll can avoid this by forwarding requests for the Example class, using the TypeForwardedToAttribute attribute. If the attribute has been applied to the new version of Utility.dll, requests for the Example class are forwarded to the assembly that now contains the class. The existing application continues to function normally, without recompilation.

NoteNote

In the .NET Framework version 2.0, you cannot forward types from assemblies written in Visual Basic. However, an application written in Visual Basic can consume forwarded types. That is, if the application uses an assembly coded in C# or C++, and a type from that assembly is forwarded to another assembly, the Visual Basic application can use the forwarded type.

Forwarding Types

There are four steps to forwarding a type:

  1. Move the source code for the type from the original assembly to the destination assembly.

  2. In the assembly where the type used to be located, add a TypeForwardedToAttribute for the type that was moved. The following code shows the attribute for a type named Example that was moved.

    [assembly:TypeForwardedToAttribute(typeof(Example))]

    [assembly:TypeForwardedToAttribute(Example::typeid)]

  3. Compile the assembly that now contains the type.

  4. Recompile the assembly where the type used to be located, with a reference to the assembly that now contains the type. For example, if you are compiling a C# file from the command line, use the /reference (Import Metadata) (C# Compiler Options) option to specify the assembly that contains the type. In C++, use the #using directive in the source file to specify the assembly that contains the type.

See Also

Reference

Type Forwarding
The #using Directive
TypeForwardedToAttribute