Versioning of Assembly

Question

What is actual purpose behind versioning of assembly and why we use it in assembly? Explain it widely.

Muralidharan Deenathayalan · Answer

Simply versioning is just number to the dll's to identify the correct version. Ex: Say you're creating an assembly for first time and you're versioned it as 1.0.0.0. And it has only the print method. After a week based on the requirement if you've added a method ReadUserInput() method and you delivered it with the version of 1.1.0.0. You've deployed both the dll in GAC. When you want to use the latest dll you can refer the 1.1 version dll and you feel that your application is not compatible with the latest version then you can refer the 1.0 version dll. Thinkif you're not maintained the version number then always you'll have latest version dll. Your application might broke becasue of the new dll and you don't any option to go back with old dll unless you've the copy of the dll. Consider you've published dll as product if can't say your customer is using the latest dll or the old dll. To overcome these kind of issues in .net we're using versioning concept. To know more about this http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/51ket42z(v=vs.100).aspx Hope this helps.

Megha Goyal · Answer

Thanks it helps me a lot in understanding versioning concept regarding assembly