This release includes a brand-new way to use Dotfuscator, designed to make it easier to get started, easier to integrate into your build, and easier to maintain your configuration.
This new approach is built on top of our existing feature set, so current users do not have to adopt it, but we are suggesting it as the primary way that all users use Dotfuscator, from now on.
To get started, you insert a few lines into your existing Visual Studio project file (i.e. a .csproj file or other MSBuild file).
Then you run a Release build as usual, and Dotfuscator automatically generates a config file for you (with default settings) and automatically protects your app.
From there, our new Automatic Input Management feature will automatically update your Dotfuscator config as you add or remove projects from your Visual Studio solution.
This new approach works for nearly all our supported platforms, including .NET Framework, .NET Core, Xamarin, and UWP.
It supports incremental builds on most platforms, and will integrate well with any downstream build steps like packaging and signing.
(Note that it does not yet support linking.)
In future releases, we plan to provide a new Visual Studio integrated UI that makes the initial setup even easier.
We have therefore deprecated our current Visual Studio integration, and it will be removed when we publish the new integration in a future release.
Note that we have also updated our terminology: a “Dotfuscator project” is now consistently referred to as a “Dotfuscator config” to avoid ambiguity with MSBuild project files, and Dotfuscator’s “Standalone GUI” is now Dotfuscator’s “Config Editor”.
/makeconfig option has been deprecated. The new /genconfig option should be used instead. Whereas /makeconfig both created a new Dotfuscator config and ran Dotfuscator with that config, /genconfig simply creates the new Dotfuscator config. Furthermore, /genconfig generates a <propertylist> element in the config file, populated with the property values passed in the command line via the /p option.dotfuscatorUI.exe) is now called “Dotfuscator Pro Config Editor” in the Windows Start Menu, and just “Config Editor” in the UI and documentation./offlineactivation has been removed, and the Dotfuscator Config Editor and the Visual Studio Integration no longer provide an offline activation dialog.InputAssemblies property on the Dotfuscate MSBuild task are now treated as input assemblies even if they are not also listed in the config file. In other words, inputs specified by the InputAssemblies property are merged with the inputs listed in the config file.DotfuscatorAttribute was added to an assembly if renaming was enabled and a Root Check was injected.