.NET Framework Essentials, 3rd Edition

Appendix D. Common Utilities

Microsoft .NET Framework provides many tools to help developers make the best use of the Framework. In the following sections, we document the commonly used subset of .NET tools that we’ve used throughout this book:

• Assembly Generation Utility (al.exe)

• Assembly Registration Utility (gacutil.exe)

• MSIL Assembler (ilasm.exe)

• MSIL Disassembler (ildasm.exe)

• C++ Compiler (cl.exe)

• C# Compiler (csc.exe)

• VB Compiler (vbc.exe)

• PE File viewer (dumpbin.exe)

• Type Library Exporter (tlbexp.exe)

• Type Library Importer (tlbimp.exe)

• XML Schema Definition Tool (xsd.exe)

• Shared Name Utility (sn.exe)

• Web Service Utility (wsdl.exe)

Assembly Generation Utility (al.exe)

al.exe is generally used to generate assemblies with manifests. Table D-1 shows some of the common uses of the Assembly Generation Utility.

Table D-1. Assembly Generation Utility common uses

Option	Description
/flags:flags	Specifies a value for the Flags field in the assembly. 0x0000: side-by-side compatible 0x0010: cannot execute with other versions in the same application domain. 0x0020: cannot execute with other versions in the same process 0x0030: cannot execute with other versions on the same computer
/help or /?	Use to get help for this command.
/keyfile:keyfilename or /keyf:keyfilename	Use to create shared components. keyfilename contains a key pair generated with the Shared Name Utility (sn.exe). The compiler inserts the public key into the assembly manifest and then signs the ...