Best Practice for Obfuscating a C# Visual Studio DSL Solution as VSIX

Question

I was wondering if anyone has any advice for obfuscating a DSL?

Background - We have created a DSL which we will putting into the Visual Studio Gallery as a VSIX file.

We already use dotfuscator for our obfuscation on other projects but I would like to know if there are any best practices or issues when packaging a DSL for deployment as a VSIX

Answer 1

Disclaimer: I am a developer at PreEmptive Solutions, the makers of Dotfuscator.

As long as your DSL assemblies are managed code you can use Dotfuscator on them. The 4.6.1005 release of Dotfuscator Professional provides support for .NET 4.0 Beta 2 assemblies. As long as your support contract is current, PreEmptive will provide support in the event you run into any issues.

The only external process you will need to implement is one to update your VSIX file either manually or via a script that will replace the unobfuscated assemblies in the original VSIX with the obfuscated ones output by Dotfuscator. See http://blogs.msdn.com/quanto/archive/2009/05/26/what-is-a-vsix.aspx for details on the structure of a VSIX and how to work with them.

While the 4.6.1005 version of Dotfuscator has been significantly updated to accept and emit XAP files, ClickOnce manifests and directories we have not yet implemented the ability for Dotfuscator to natively process VSIX assemblies. I have put this enhancement on our request list :) .