Reflecting Aspect Instances at Run Time

Attribute multicasting was designed primarily as a mechanism to add aspects to a program. Most of the time, the custom attribute representing an aspect can be removed after the aspect has been applied.

By default, if you add an aspect to a program and look at the resulting program using a disassembler or System.Reflection, you will not find these corresponding custom attributes.

If you need your aspect (or any other multicast attribute) to be reflected by System.Reflection or any other tool, you have to set the PersistMetaData property to true.

For instance:

[MulticastAttributeUsage( MulticastTargets.Class, PersistMetaData = true )]
public class TagAttribute : MulticastAttribute
{
  public string Tag;
}