Use PowerShell to view contents of the Global Assembly Cache (GAC)

Is there a way to use PowerShell to view the contents of the GAC?

You can do it just from a command prompt:

cd C:\Windows\assembly
dir

The GAC has a specific directory structure, and you should not go moving or deleting things in there using the command prompt - rather use windows explorer (gui) or gacutil (cli)

To list entries in the GAC;

gacutil -l

In powershell you could parse the text output of the above.
I don't know of a managed interface to inspect the GAC.

Another option is that the [PowerShell Community Extensions][1] installs a GAC provider, so you can do this:

dir gac:

If you are on PowerShell V2, be sure to grab the 1.2 Beta.


[1]:

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If you want to search for a specific assembly in the GAC.

Also note, since MS has changed the GAC structure you can use the -Recurse option from the root to search all the GAC.

CD C:\Windows\assembly
ls -Recurse | ?{$_.Name -like "*log4net*"}

As stated in [the docs][1]:

> Starting with the .NET Framework 4, the default location for the global assembly cache is %windir%\Microsoft.NET\assembly. In earlier versions of the .NET Framework, the default location is %windir%\assembly.

You may want to search in the appropriate subdir or even in both of them.


[1]:

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I had the same question. The question became more prominent with .Net 4.0 and there not being a Windows Explorer shell plugin available to view the contents. GacUtil works, but is not flexible enough and takes a lot to install. The PowerShell Community Extensions option is to limited in it's functionality and contains to many other CmdLets that I don't need. Therefore I've written my own PowerShell module to view and change the GAC. It can be found on

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This project has moved to GitHub. You can now find it on:

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It can also be found in the PowerShell Gallery:

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# Show the assemblies in the GAC, including the file version
Get-GacAssembly SomeCompany* | Format-Table -View FileVersion

I successfully listed GAC using this code snippet:

```
New-PSDrive -Name HKCR -PSProvider 'Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\Registry' -Root HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
Get-ItemProperty -Path 'HKCR:\Installer\Assemblies\Global' | Get-Member -MemberType NoteProperty
```
Solution taken from [here](

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).