Inspect .NET assemblies with REA

Unofficial guide. This site is an independent community guide and is not affiliated with the REA project. For authoritative docs see the official REA website and the morluto/rea GitHub repository. Commands here are taken from the official README/docs (checked 2026-10-13); REA changes quickly, so verify against the official docs.

REA reads .NET PE/CLI metadata and CIL without loading or executing the assembly, and needs no native engine.

rea inspect-managed-artifact /absolute/path/Assembly.dll --json
rea inspect-managed-members /absolute/path/Assembly.dll --json
rea inspect-managed-members /absolute/path/Assembly.dll --type Example.Parser --json

All seven tools

• inspect_managed_artifact – identify artifact and deployment form
• inspect_managed_members – types, signatures, CIL bodies, calls
• inspect_managed_native_boundaries – P/Invoke style native calls
• compare_managed_members – diff builds
• verify_managed_native_boundaries
• import_managed_reconstruction
• project_managed_application_graph

CLI form: replace underscores with hyphens and prefix rea.

Limits

Choose by content, not extension. REA does not unpack .NET single-file hosts or decode IL2CPP metadata; NativeAOT method bodies need native analysis. Decompiled C# output is an open feature request (#2299).

Related guides

• Use cases
• REA CLI command cheat sheet
• REA vs Ghidra vs IDA

Sources: managed-code-analysis.md · cli.md

FAQ