PostSharp remapping obfuscated code

Question

I am using NLog to create different loggers with different loglevels foreach class. Each logmessage contains the name of the class and the method.

I am also using PostSharp to create code around my methods. The created code basically gets the logger for the current class and writes a logentry.

My problem is that I need to obfuscate my program and want to log the unobfuscated name of the class.

After obfuscating my program it works properly but logs the obfuscated classnames.

I searched the web for solutions and found this blog from PostSharp:

http://www.postsharp.net/blog/post/Whate28099s-New-in-PostSharp-21-Support-for-Obfuscation-%28Dotfuscator%29

The problem is that I don't get how I can implement this "post-obfuscation step (implemented by PostSharp)".

I know how to create a MSBuild project file and how to run it using MSBuild.exe but I don't know what the "PostSharp.AddIn.PostObfuscation.targets" and "PostObfuscationRemap" are doing or how they look like.

I hope that I described my problem properly and that one of you has an answer to it.

Answer 1

The blog post from PostSharp that you found is actually about solving a different problem - the incompatibility of PostSharp 2.1 itself with obfuscation tools. PostSharp 3.0+ is already compatible with obfuscation tools and the blog post is not relevant for these newer versions.

Your problem is different though - I suspect that your logging code accesses the name of the class during run-time and thus receives an obfuscated class name. You should try to prepare a logging format string during compile time and store it in the aspect's field. This way you can store an original class name in your string and access it during run-time.

[Serializable]
public sealed class TraceAttribute : OnMethodBoundaryAspect
{
    private string enteringMessage;

    public override void CompileTimeInitialize(MethodBase method, AspectInfo aspectInfo)
    {
        string methodName = method.DeclaringType.FullName + method.Name;
        this.enteringMessage = "Entering " + method.DeclaringType.FullName + method.Name;
    }

    public override void OnEntry(MethodExecutionArgs args)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(this.enteringMessage);
    }
}

Answer 2

Thanks for the answer, you're right about the blog post not being relevant anymore.

I'm now trying the newer version of PostSharp and the remapping seems to work now.

But my code wasn't the problem. My code Looks actually quite similar. I missed some files like the .psproj and GlobalAspect.cs file. I figured out that this was my actual problem.

I missed these files because I couldn't use NuGet to install PostSharp automatically and NuGet creates these files by itself usually.