Hello,

I have a .NET application that calls functions in a native DLL.  In
order to ease deployment, and for simplicity's sake, it occurred to me
that the best way to distribute this DLL would be as a resource.

So I've added the DLL to the project as an embedded resource, and I've
confirmed that I can, at runtime load that dll into a buffer, a la:

byte[] buf = null;
using(Stream bar =
Assembly.GetCallingAssembly().GetManifestResourceStream(theName))
{
    buf = new byte[bar.Length];
    bar.Read(buf, 0, (int)bar.Length);
}

And then I tried loading that dll using both

AppDomain.CurrentDomain.Load(buf);

and

Module baz = Assembly.GetCallingAssembly().LoadModule(theName, buf);

Both of these throw an exception.  AppDomain.Load throws
BadImageFormatException (which seems understandable since this DLL
doesn't have a CLR header and isnt a .NET assembly)  and
Assembly.LoadModule complains about the filename.  Also, I'll admit
that I dont really understand what Assembly.LoadModule is supposed to
do, but it also seems, from MSDN, that this too is supposed to act on
CLR modules.

I've found, on google, references to people who acheived this goal by
storing the DLL as a resource and writing it out to a local file at run
time and then accessing it normally. This seems inelegant to me.  Is
this really the only solution?

Thanks
Ian