January 2013
Intermediate to advanced
912 pages
26h 58m
English
book
Professional Visual Basic 2012 and .NET 4.5 Programming
by Bill Sheldon, Billy Hollis, Rob Windsor, David McCarter, Gastón Hillar, Todd Herman
Content preview from Professional Visual Basic 2012 and .NET 4.5 Programming
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Assemblies
The assembly is used by the CLR as the smallest unit for the following:
- Deployment
- Version control
- Security
- Type grouping
- Code reuse
An assembly must contain a manifest, which tells the CLR what else is in the assembly. The other elements fall into the following three categories:
1. Type metadata
2. Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) code
3. Resources
An assembly can be just one file. Figure 17.1 details the contents of a single-file assembly. Alternatively, the structure can be split across multiple files.
Figure 17.1 Logical structure of an assembly
An assembly can have only one manifest section across all the files that make up the assembly. There is nothing stopping you, however, from having a resource section (or any of the other available section types, such as Metadata and MSIL code) in separate files that make up an assembly.