C# 7 and .NET: Designing Modern Cross-platform Applications

Understanding dependent assemblies

If an assembly is compiled as a class library (it provides types for other assemblies to use), then it has the file extension .dll (dynamic link library) and it cannot be executed standalone. It must be executed by the dotnet run command.

If an assembly is compiled as an application, then it has the file extension .exe (executable) and can be executed standalone.

Any assembly (both EXE applications and DLL class libraries) can reference one or more DLL class library assemblies as dependencies, but you cannot have circular references, so assembly B cannot reference assembly A, if assembly A already references assembly B. Visual Studio will warn you if you attempt to add a dependency reference that would cause ...