When encountering problems with resolving DLLs and assemblies in general with .Net fuslogvw gave you the ability to log the binding attempts so you could see exactly where it was looking and what was going on.

There is a github issue discussing this, but it's not exactly got very much detail on what COREHOST_TRACE actually provides, nor the best way to get the output, nor how to interpret the output.

So, is COREHOST_TRACE the best option?

If so how is it used?

If not, what's the better option?

I'd like to know the answer to this general question, because it's a useful tool to have and so has uses well beyond my current problem. However I am also trying to fix a specific problem, so I've included details of that below.

I'm using...

• VS 15.7.2
• asp.net core 2.0
• The DLL in question is native, and is being accessed via DllImport.

Interestingly the DLL is resolved when I publish a release build, but fails running locally for development builds.

Exception: System.DllNotFoundException: Unable to load DLL 'libwkhtmltox': The specified module could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E)

The DLL in question is beinging copied to the root of the output directory:

<ItemGroup>
    <ContentWithTargetPath Include="Dependencies\wkhtmltox\v0.12.4\32 bit\libwkhtmltox.dll">
        <CopyToOutputDirectory>Always</CopyToOutputDirectory>
        <TargetPath>libwkhtmltox.dll</TargetPath>
    </ContentWithTargetPath>
</ItemGroup>