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.NET Forum / Languages / C# / March 2008Assembly.LoadXXX methods and GAC
I have a situation at work that has me wondering if GAC is causing more harm than good in my particular scenario. Our application depends on a third party dll that is installed in the GAC. This assembly seems to change its build/revision portion of its version numbers with every new iteration of the software. If I were to write an application that dynamically loads this assembly using reflection, and calls its members, there is no way my application can remain in sync with the third party software, right? I mean, if I write my application to load a certain version from the GAC using Assembly.Load and then deploy it and our vendor promptly comes out with a new version that does not have any significant changes to the shared assembly but still bumps up the build/revision number, my application will now stop working because it can't find the right version, right? Of course when my vendor installs the new software my application will also be restarted to ensure that I don't make calls on zombie objects. I guess my point is Assembly.LoadWithPartialName would've greatly helped me here. I simply want to pull whatever version of this shared assembly is present in the GAC. Either I am missing something blindingly obvious or else I have run into a legitimate corner case. Which is it? There is a way that you can redirect your application to use a different version of the assembly without recompiling your application: Add a configuration file. The configuration file should be named yourapplication.exe.config and, among the various things that it can contain, there is a node called <bindingRedirect oldVersion=... newVersion=.../> that you can apply to one of the referenced assemblies. The .Net configuration tool in Control Panel can generate this file, so you don't need to know the exact structure of the xml that it contains. However, the "right" way to do things would be for the vendor that provides the assembly to deliver a Publisher Policy every time that they produce a new version of the assembly. The Publisher Policy is installed to the GAC, and it contains the Binding Redirect that instructs the .Net runtime to redirect requests for previous versions into the new (compatible) version, so that the users don't have to reconfigure all the possible programs in the system that might be making use of the assembly in the GAC. >I have a situation at work that has me wondering if GAC is causing > more harm than good in my particular scenario. [quoted text clipped - 22 lines] > > Which is it? PublisherPolicy seems to be the way to go. Thanks Alberto!! I did know about redirects and publisher policies but for some reason the latter slipped my mind. Are you saying that if I end up having something like this in code: Assembly.Load("someassembly,version=1.0.0.0......"); and the vendor deploys someassembly ver 1.1.0.0, the publisher policy will ensure that all requests for 1.0.0.0 versions are redirected to the new ones? OK. That seems nice. What if he comes up with 1.3.0.0 later? In other words is there a way in the publisher policy to redirect a *range* of older versions to the latest version installed by the vendor? On Mar 19, 1:35 pm, "Alberto Poblacion" <earthling- quitaestoparacontes...@poblacion.org> wrote: > There is a way that you can redirect your application to use a different > version of the assembly without recompiling your application: Add a [quoted text clipped - 39 lines] > > > Which is it? > PublisherPolicy seems to be the way to go. Thanks Alberto!! I did > know about redirects and publisher policies but for some reason the [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > will ensure that all requests for 1.0.0.0 versions are redirected to > the new ones? I believe it should work, although I have only tried it out with statically linked assemblies. If you need to debug the fusion process, you can use the Fusion Log Viewer (FUSLOGVW,EXE), which will show you the complete process of searching for an assembly, the places where the runtime is looking for it, the policies that are aplied, and so on. > OK. That seems nice. What if he comes up with 1.3.0.0 later? In > other words is there a way in the publisher policy to redirect a > *range* of older versions to the latest version installed by the > vendor? The BindingPolicy allows a range of versions such as 1.2.3.4-1.9.9.9 for the RequestedVersion, but the NewVersion has to be a specific one, such as 2.0.1.2. So you can redirect a range of older versions to a new one, but you can't specify thet the "new one" always be automatically the latest. Free MagazinesGet these publications absolutely FREE for up to 12 months. There are no hidden fees and no obligation. Simply choose a title, complete the application form and submit it. Read more ...
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