What's Inside: A .NET assembly! (and how does Hot Reload change it?)
summary
A .NET DLL is literally a compact relational database of metadata tables and IL, where metadata tokens pack table+row into four bytes and IL opcodes carry those tokens instead of addresses. The IDE and Roslyn produce delta compilations (generations) that contain only changed method defs and portable PDB debug tables; the runtime applies them by reading ENC log/map entries that remap token IDs so the DLL file itself never changes. Demos use ILSpy, MDV and Roslyn; adding methods yields new generation logs and missing‑method exceptions when old tokens remain.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Welcome to .NET assemblies
- 1:26Metadata tables
- 10:18Why metadata matters
- 11:41What assemblies lack
- 15:10Hot Reload changes assemblies
- 23:18Demo: Hot Reload with MDV
- 32:27Hot Reload and C# features
- 38:42Debugging state machines
- 40:29Live Hot Reload demo
- 49:21Hot Reload vs dotnet watch
- 53:36Q&A
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