I came across an article via PANS which implied that the assemblies which are in the assemblies.xml are loaded at the start of the session. Is this true? And if so, what would be the alternative (so that the assemblies are loaded when needed)?
the article URL is: https://progress.my.salesforce.com/articles/Article/000030561?popup=true
Any assemblies in the assemblies.xml file are loaded when the CLR is loaded. If you specify -preloadCLR on the command line, this will occur at session startup. Otherwise, it will happen the first time the AVM needs an assembly (e.g. when it loads the first piece of r-code with a .NET assembly reference).At runtime, this could be the program that executes the Application:Run() method.
Assemblies not listed in the assemblies.xml file will be loaded on the first reference to the assembly, either in r-code or by reflection.