In this article we’ll discuss assembly in .NET environment. If you’ve
any questions, suggestions or feedback then please feel free to
comment.
What is assembly ? –
Assembly is unit of deployment like EXE or a DLL.
Assembly consists of one or more files (dlls,.exe’s, html files etc),
and represents a group of resources , type definitions, and
implementations of those types.
An assembly may also contain references
to other assemblies.
These resources, types and references are described
in a block of data called a manifest. The manifest is part of the
assembly, thus making the assembly self-describing.
An assembly is completely self describing. An assembly contains
metadata information,which is used by the CLR for everything from type
checking an security to actually invoking the components methods.
As all
the information is in the self assembly itself, it is independent of
registry . This is the basic advantage as compared to COM where the
version was stored in the registry.
Multiple versions can be deployed side by side in different folders.
These different versions can execute at the same time without
interfering with each other. Assemblies can be private or shared .
For
private assembly deployment, the assembly is copied ot the same
directory as the client program that references it. No registration is
needed, and no fancy installation program is required.
When the
component is removed, no registry cleanup is needed, and no uninstall
program is required. Just delete it from the hard drive.
