Assemblies

An assembly is a collection of types and any other supporting resources. .NET objects are implemented within assemblies. An assembly may be static (based on a file) or dynamic (created in memory).

The assembly type load locations can be seen by exploring the Assembly property of the type. For example, the String type is loaded from System.Private.CoreLib.dll in PowerShell 7:

PS> [System.String].Assembly.Location
C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7\System.Private.CoreLib.dll

In PowerShell 7, the assemblies that are loaded by default or those that can be loaded by name are in the $PSHome directory.

The list of currently loaded assemblies by PowerShell in the current session can be viewed using the following statement:

[System.AppDomain]::CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies()

The list can be quite extensive and can grow as different modules (which might depend on other .NET types) are loaded. The first few lines are shown here:

GAC    Version     Location
---    -------     --------
False ...