Visual Basic 2015 Unleashed

Assembly Overview

Assemblies can be discussed with two points of view: a physical one and a logical one. From the physical point of view, an assembly is an .exe or .dll file containing executable modules and resources. From a logical point of view, an assembly is the smallest unit for deploying .NET applications that also provides version information and enables code reuse. Chapter 44, “Reflection,” discusses how, from the physical perspective, an assembly is a container of Intermediate Language code, metadata, and resources. This chapter focuses the discussion on the logical perspective so that you can understand some other purposes of this unit of work. In some cases, details of some of the topics have been previously discussed, but for your ...