Invalid offsets in IL instructions after modifying assembly with Mono.Cecil

Hi

Since 2008 I've been using Mono.Cecil, an amazing piece of software, that exposes .Net assemblies contents in a relatively easy and intuitive way so one can inspect and/or change the assembly's contents. 

Unfortunately, in order to use Mono.Cecil effectively, you need a fair amount of knowledge about how MS IL works and Mono.Cecil documentation is kind of sparse (to say the least).

Some time ago I was using it to change some assembly IL and to my surprise after applying the changes peverify complained that some IL instructions had invalid offsets. 

After some head scratching I've figured out that the issue was that the target of a (short) branch instruction have crossed the threshold that would require it to be  a normal branch (i.e, one that could use 32 bits offsets instead of 8 bits of the short version).

So now the issue was that I'd be forced to scan every single IL instruction in the method body and check/fix the target offset of branches; fortunately, Mono.Cecil has  two methods: MethodBody.SimplifyMacros() and  MethodBody.OptimizeMacros() that can be used to achieve my goal. 

Basically before start doing changes to the method body's IL, you call SimplifyMacros() and when you've finished with your changes on that method body you call OptimizeMacros() and Cecil will take care of adjusting branches accordingly. Nice!


Thanks everybody that helped to develop Mono.Cecil! It's really a handy library! :)

(Leia este post em português)