More Information About Reflection Emit

The following specifications, which are located in the Tool Developers Guide directory of the .NET Framework SDK, provide information about concepts relevant to reflection emit:

  • The Metadata API specification defines unmanaged APIs for importing and exporting metadata. These APIs are intended for use by compilers, loaders, and other low-level tools that require fast access to metadata.
  • The Metadata Validation specification defines the conditions that ensure the metadata is well formed.
  • The Unmanaged Symbolic Info Interfaces specification describes the unmanaged interfaces for reading and writing symbolic information. The managed versions of these interfaces are defined in the System.Diagnostics.SymbolStore namespace.

The class library reference pages describe the System.Reflection types that you can use at run time to obtain information about assemblies, modules, types, and so on. Most classes and interfaces in the System.Reflection.Emit namespace extend classes and interfaces in the Reflection namespace.