Q: What's all the fuss regarding .NET Reflector?
 

I'm a newb in .NET RE, but when I use DnSpy, it seems like a MUCH better product - to me at least. I love how it can create a project file out of an EXE (not perfect - but damn, it's close).

Anyway, I'm asking if there is some cool option in Reflector that I'm missing because the free tool seems a clear winner.

-thx

Reflector has different decompiler, so you never know which one will produce better output...
btw, dnSPy is based on old ILSpy (v2.x) decompiler which is pretty poor (eg can't take care of lambdas, etc)

ILSpy v3 in this scense is a cosmic rocket (but still in dev phase...)

Hmmm... Never thought of it in that respect of decompiler differences. Good feeback. Although, I do like the debugging aspect of dnSPY, which I don't see in Reflector. But I guess it's no different in the respect of different tools for different tasks.

from debugging point of view dnSpy
is

a
super
nova
rock
star


no one is even a 100 miles neaby....

I'm serios - dnSpy is a genious .net debugger, the best ever seen!

Addendum - I'm also using these .net decompilers (not debuggers)
free, but closed source

- Telerik Just Decompile http://prntscr.com/ih1nzp
and
- JetBrains DotPeek http://prntscr.com/ih1q5u

the rest are rather old and or obsoleted...

a very few supports latest .net - core ed.

Can any .NET decompiler handle 100% of control flow constructs? Or are they all doing non-general naïve structuring algorithms? It seems the algo's are always kept quite proprietary but the graph structure is the only real interesting part of the decompiler.

Forgive my ignorance, but I've not seen a graph view in a .NET disassembler. And my guess would be no, to your question, based on the different output I've seen by decompiling the same EXE using different tools. I think you can get close, if you know the language and framework. However, compiler options, etc, would dictate that you would never see a true representation, regardless. That said, you may want to start your own thread to get a potentially better response.

what do you mean under compiler options?
AFAIK there are no optimisation levels in C# comparing to C/C++ (-O1...5)

the question is that once some dirty packer eats genuine brilliant IL byes... they become pretty crazy to almost any decompiler :)

.NET Reflector was the first popular decompiler for .NET languages. It was freeware and had an extension API with quite a few useful community provided extensions. After being freeware for a number of years, the author sold it to redgate which commercialized it. Since then, many freeware and FOSS alternatives have appeared, and rival Reflector in quality.

I guess the fuss surrounding it is because it was once king, and it is the oldest of the good decompilers even though many abandoned it and consider the author a sellout.

In first contact with any net assembly the SAE is the way in my opinion, normaly this tool is enought to reverse the aplication, however sometimes the reflector-telerik-ilspy-dotpeek and a debugger dnspy(fantastic tool) need be used too. Reflector have good plugins like dnlibeditor developed by codecracker so you can manage app's in mixed mode, and the reflexil and others. So for me in the net languages scenario it is essential to have at least three tools: SAE, Reflector or Other, and finally the Dnspy.

Hmmm, that's probably true (as in levels of optimization - sry if I misunderstand you), but there are several compiler options and I thought there was an -optimize option in there somewhere. I'm certainly no expert. ;)

Excuse my ignorance. Are you talking this?

https://github.com/wickyhu/simple-assembly-explorer

Sadly, the external download locations for DnlibEditor.zip (posted on this forum) are all dead. If you provide an external link, I would be very grateful.

Cheers!

You can download this tool here:http://www115.zippyshare.com/v/KHXCRi80/file.html

wow, old good SAE - is it still supported?

The GitHub repository I found is 3yrs since last change. I don't know the original author, so... :(