Assembly Embedding

Babel Obfuscator provides a feature to embed multiple assemblies into the main application, which can reduce the overall size of the deployed assembly. When embedding assemblies with Babel Obfuscator, the embedded assemblies are first encrypted and compressed before being stored as managed resources within the main application assembly.

To protect the code as well, obfuscate each dependency first (keeping its public API so cross-assembly references stay intact), then embed the already-obfuscated assemblies:

babel MyApp.View.dll --output obf/MyApp.View.dll [obfuscation options]
babel MyApp.dll --embed obf/MyApp.View.dll [obfuscation options]

Embedding From Command Line

To embed assemblies from the command line using the Babel tool, you can use the --embed option followed by the assembly file path to embed. You can enter the command multiple times to embed several assemblies.

babel MyApp.exe --embed Library1.dll --embed Library2.dll

This command will embed Library1.dll and Library2.dll into MyApp.exe. The embedded assemblies will be stored as managed resources within the main assembly.

You can also use an XML rules file to specify additional settings, such as compression or encryption. For example, create a file named embed.xml with the following contents:

<Rules>
  <Rule name="Library1" feature="embed" exclude="false">
    <Target>Assembly</Target>
    <Pattern>Library1.dll</Pattern>
    <Properties>
      <Compress>false</Compress>
    </Properties>
  </Rule>
  <Rule name="Library2" feature="embed" exclude="false">
    <Target>Assembly</Target>
    <Pattern>Library2.dll</Pattern>
    <Properties>
      <Encrypt>false</Encrypt>
    </Properties>
  </Rule>
</Rules>

Then run the following command to embed the assemblies based on the rules file:

babel MyApp.exe --embed Library1.dll --embed Library2.dll --rules embed.xml

Embedding From MSBuild Babel Task

To embed assemblies using the MSBuild Babel task, you need to add a new ItemGroup element in your project file. Inside the ItemGroup, you can define multiple EmbedAssembly items, each one specifying a path to an assembly file to embed. For example:

<ItemGroup>
   <EmbedAssembly Include="path/to/Assembly1.dll" />
   <EmbedAssembly Include="path/to/Assembly2.dll" />
</ItemGroup>

You can reference the EmbedAssembly in the Babel task using the EmbedAssemblies attribute:

<Babel EmbedAssemblies="@(EmbedAssembly)" RulesFiles="embed.xml" />

You can optionally specify a rule file to customize the compression and encryption settings for each embedded assembly. By default, embedded assemblies are compressed and encrypted using Babel’s default settings, but a rule file can be used to customize these settings if necessary.

Embedding From Babel Desktop

To embed assemblies using Babel Desktop, follow these steps:

See Obfuscation Projects for more about the project canvas.