Programming in the .NET Environment

Assemblies and Manifests

Packaging a component so that other programs can use it presents a number of challenges. Traditionally, a COM component is packaged in a dynamically linked library. When client programs seek to access a component, the operating system loads the component's DLL into the client's address space. The client can then utilize the functionality of the component. Although this system offers benefits, such as code reuse and efficiency, it creates a number of problems as well. For instance, the loading of DLLs is normally based on the name of the DLL. With versioning of the components, the name of the DLL does not necessarily change but the version of the component does. Thus, clients may get incompatible versions of the DLL loaded ...