Assemblies
Assemblies are the building blocks of .NET Framework applications; they form the fundamental unit of deployment, version control, reuse, activation scoping, and security permissions. An assembly is a collection of types and resources that are built to work together and form a logical unit of functionality. An assembly provides the common language runtime with the information it needs to be aware of type implementations. To the runtime, a type does not exist outside the context of an assembly.
In This Section
- Assemblies Overview
- Provides an overview of the functions performed by assemblies.
- Assembly Benefits
- Describes how assemblies help solve versioning problems and DLL conflicts.
- Assembly Contents
- Describes the elements that make up an assembly.
- Global Assembly Cache
- Describes the global assembly cache and how it is used with assemblies.
- Assembly Security Considerations
- Discusses how security works with assemblies.
- Assembly Versioning
- Provides an overview of the .NET Framework versioning policy.
- Assembly Placement
- Discusses where to locate assemblies.
- Assemblies and Side-by-Side Execution
- Provides an overview of using multiple versions of the runtime or of an assembly simultaneously.
Related Sections
- Programming with Assemblies
- Describes how to create, sign, and set attributes on assemblies.
- Emitting Dynamic Assemblies
- Describes how to create dynamic assemblies.
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