Building Solutions with the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework: Architecture and Best Practices for Mobile Development

Versioning in the Compact Framework

One of the truly revolutionary aspects of the .NET Framework and, thus, of the Compact Framework is the enhanced support for versioning and code sharing. Unlike previous unmanaged environments such as COM, in which a component was automatically published to the systemwide registry, the managed world supports both private and shared components, as well as a robust side-by-side versioning system.

Private Assemblies

In one key respect, the code-sharing model of the Compact Framework inverts that used by managed environments, such as COM, as exposed through VB 6.0. In the Compact Framework, components (assemblies) ...