Assemblies

Question

Saroj Kumar Sahu · Answer

Assembly is the smallest unit of deployment of a .net application. It can be a dll or an exe . There are mainly two types to it: Private Assembly: The dll or exe which is sole property of one application only. It is generally stored in application root folder Public/Shared assembly: It is a dll which can be used by multiple applications at a time. A shared assembly is stored in GAC i.e Global Assembly Cache . GAC is simply C:\Windows\Assembly folder where you can find the public assemblies/dlls of all the softwares installed in your PC. There is also a third and least known type of an assembly: Satellite Assembly : A Satellite Assembly contains only static objects like images and other non-executable files required by the application.

Manoj Bhoir · Answer

Hi, Assemblies are the building blocks of . NET Framework applications; they form the fundamental unit of deployment, version control, reuse, activation scoping, and security permissions. An assembly is a collection of types and resources that are built to work together and form a logical unit of functionality. Assemblies are a fundamental part of programming with the .NET Framework. An assembly performs the following functions: It contains code that the common language runtime executes. Microsoft intermediate language (MSIL) code in a portable executable (PE) file will not be executed if it does not have an associated assembly manifest. Note that each assembly can have only one entry point (that is, DllMain , WinMain , or Main ). It forms a security boundary. An assembly is the unit at which permissions are requested and granted. For more information about security boundaries as they apply to assemblies, see Assembly Security Considerations . It forms a type boundary. Every type's identity includes the name of the assembly in which it resides. A type called MyType loaded in the scope of one assembly is not the same as a type called MyType loaded in the scope of another assembly. It forms a reference scope boundary. The assembly's manifest contains assembly metadata that is used for resolving types and satisfying resource requests. It specifies the types and resources that are exposed outside the assembly. The manifest also enumerates other assemblies on which it depends. It forms a version boundary. The assembly is the smallest versionable unit in the common language runtime; all types and resources in the same assembly are versioned as a unit. The assembly's manifest describes the version dependencies you specify for any dependent assemblies. For more information about versioning, see Assembly Versioning . It forms a deployment unit. When an application starts, only the assemblies that the application initially calls must be present. Other assemblies, such as localization resources or assemblies containing utility classes, can be retrieved on demand. This allows applications to be kept simple and thin when first downloaded. For more information about deploying assemblies, see Deploying Applications . It is the unit at which side-by-side execution is supported. For more information about running multiple versions of an assembly, see Assemblies and Side-by-Side Execution . For more details check this link : Assemblies Overview Assemblies in the Common Language Runtime

Munesh Sharma · Answer

Assembly means A chunk of (precompiled) code that can be executed by the .NET runtime environment. A .NET program consists of one or more assemblies.

Assemblies

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