I want to be able to load the views/viewmodel assemblies into Caliburn Micro dynamically, i.e. instead of adding references to them to the project….

Well, we’ve got two ways of loading assemblies (that I’m currently aware of). The first is via the Bootstrapper and the second can be handled pretty much anywhere. Both examples below are shown using the DLL name, but ofcourse we could take this further via configuration files, build out own attributes and so on, but I leave that decision to the user.

So through Bootstrapper simply overload SelectAssemblies, for example

protected override IEnumerable<Assembly> SelectAssemblies()
{
   string path = Path.GetDirectoryName(
                    Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);
   return base.SelectAssemblies().Concat(
         new Assembly[] 
         { 
            Assembly.LoadFile(Path.Combine(path, "MyViews.dll"))
         });
}

However if you’re using a plugin approach, possibly where you allow the user to select a plugin DLL or the likes, then at the point you want to load the assembly you could write something like the following

string path = Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);
Assembly a = Assembly.LoadFile(Path.Combine(path, "Rabbit.Controls.dll"));
AssemblySource.Instance.Add(a);

The key here is the AssemblySource singleton and adding assemblies to the IObservableCollection Instance.