Programming C#, 4th Edition

Chapter 17. Assemblies and Versioning

The basic unit of .NET deployment is the assembly . An assembly is a collection of files that appear to be a single DLL or executable (EXE). As noted earlier, DLLs are collections of classes and methods that are linked into your running program only when they are needed.

Assemblies are the .NET unit of reuse, versioning, security, and deployment. This chapter discusses assemblies in detail, including the architecture and contents of assemblies, private assemblies, and shared assemblies.

In addition to the object code for the application, assemblies contain resources such as .gif files, type definitions for each class you define, as well as other metadata about the code and data.

PE Files

On disk, assemblies are Portable Executable (PE) files. PE files aren’t new. The format of a .NET PE file is exactly the same as a normal Windows PE file. PE files are implemented as DLLs or EXEs.

Physically, assemblies consist of one or more modules . Modules are the constituent pieces of assemblies. Standing alone, modules can’t be executed; they must be combined into assemblies to be useful.

You will deploy and reuse the entire contents of an assembly as a unit. Assemblies are loaded on demand, and will not be loaded if not needed.

Metadata

Metadata is information stored in the assembly that describes the types and methods of the assembly and provides other useful information about the assembly. Assemblies are said to be self-describing because the metadata ...