---
title: "LibCheck: List breaking changes between assembly versions"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/6/19/libcheck-list-breaking-changes-between-assembly-versions.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/6/19/libcheck-list-breaking-changes-between-assembly-versions.html"
published: "2005-06-19T15:28:00"
updated: "2005-06-19T15:28:00"
tags: [".Net Quotations", "Cool Tools"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Another cool tool I'll need to check out from the BCL team: LibCheck \"Basically, LibCheck analyzes a version of a library, and compares it to another version of the same library. It then reports the differences ... in a…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# LibCheck: List breaking changes between assembly versions

By Roy Osherove June 19, 2005 In [.Net Quotations](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-quotations), [Cool Tools](https://osherove.com/blog/category/cool-tools)

**Historical article** · Originally published June 19, 2005; technical details may be outdated.

Another cool tool I'll need to check out from the [BCL](http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/programming/bcl/) team: [LibCheck](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=4b5b7f29-1939-4e5b-a780-70e887964165&displaylang=en)

"Basically, LibCheck analyzes a version of a library, and compares it to another version of the same library. It then reports the differences ... in a list, available as HTML or xml. ...the list is presented as a set of removed, and added methods. When we can detect that change in question is a breaking change (and generally, removals are likely candidates!), we color the change red.

Now if you're used to the change report we put out periodically with a release, **you now have the tool that generates that list!** "

(via [BCL Blog](http://blogs.msdn.com/bclteam/archive/2005/03/21/400123.aspx#comments))

Update:

Not to scare anyone , [but this guy has had a very bad experience](http://vidmar.net/weblog/archive/2005/06/19/1672.aspx) while running the LibCheck build file- His windows XP installation got corrupted.. I'm not saying (neither is he) that the build caused this somehow, but just to be on the safe side - don't run this anywhere important unless you're sure it's ok and stable..

## More in .Net Quotations

[All posts in .Net Quotations](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-quotations)

- Jun 26, 2005

    ### [Great article on Reflection and Performance on MSDN Mag](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/6/26/great-article-on-reflection-and-performance-on-msdn-mag.html)

- Jun 19, 2005

    ### [New Advanced .NET Debugging Blog](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/6/19/new-advanced-net-debugging-blog.html)

- Jun 13, 2005

    ### [XStream.NET - Serialize almost anything easily?](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/6/13/xstreamnet-serialize-almost-anything-easily.html)

- Apr 9, 2005

    ### [Enterprise Library - Configuration AB Memory Leak Patch](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/4/9/enterprise-library-configuration-ab-memory-leak-patch.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

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### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/