Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform, Fifth Edition

14.6. Understanding Private Assemblies

Technically speaking, the code libraries you've created thus far in this chapter have been deployed as private assemblies. Private assemblies must be located within the same directory as the client application that's using them (the application directory) or a subdirectory thereof. Recall that when you set a reference to CarLibrary.dll while building the CSharpCarClient.exe and VisualBasicCarClient.exe applications, Visual Studio 2010 responded by placing a copy of CarLibrary.dll within the client's application directory (at least, after the first compilation).

When a client program uses the types defined within this external assembly, the CLR simply loads the local copy of CarLibrary.dll. Because the .NET ...