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Very long assembly name

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Speaking of file name inspired me to write another post about assembly name.

Windows supports long file path since Win95 time. It has a MAX_PATH limit, which is defined as 260.

Prior to .Net era, you seldom see long file name. If you poke around your system32 directory, you probably won't notice any thing longer than 10 charater(excluding extenstion). Guess people are slowly migrating from DOS 8.3 era. MAX_PATH is really a luxury.

This is suddenly changed in .Net era. If you installed .Net framework redist, you have System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Soap.dll. If you installed Visual Studio, you have Microsoft.VisualStudioAnalyzer.PrimaryEventCollector.dll.

And I have seen longer. 6 or 7 dots, with more than 10 charaters between dots.

Now suddenly MAX_PATH is not looking good.

I certainly don't like short name. But don't these very long names go too far?

Neverthless, Let's do some simple caculation to see what is the longest assembly name that can fit in GAC.

As of today, stuff lives in GAC have the following format(Subject to change in the future):
%windir%\assembly\GAC\<assembly name>\<version>_<culture>_<public key token>\<assembly name>.dll

Assume %windir%=C:\Windows, and <version> = 1.0.5000.0, <culture>=””, now all the non assembly name parts have a total of 59 character(Don't forget a null terminator). So maximum assembly name length is (MAX_PATH - 59) / 2 = 100 character.

Of course, if your version is longer than 1.0.5000.0, your limit is smaller.
And smaller if you have a culture.
And smaller if you want your assembly to be NGENed.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 05, 2004
    Actually NT kernels support 2^31 characters in a file name (well, the full path to be exact), just start with "?".
  • Anonymous
    February 05, 2004
    This is a very heated debate. Most kernel32.dll APIs support 2^31 character long file name. But shell32.dll and shlwapi.dll APIs are very much tight to MAX_PATH limit.
  • Anonymous
    February 05, 2004
    Shouldnt everything support the max UNC limit?
  • Anonymous
    February 05, 2004
    Shouldnt everything support the max UNC limit?
  • Anonymous
    February 05, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 05, 2004
    The problem is if Microsoft does not make a move, nobody else will. But if Microsoft makes a move, many existing applicationd will be broken. Kind of chicken-and-egg problem.
  • Anonymous
    February 06, 2004
    This will probably affect localization projects. For now many companies are just developing US versions and may not hit the problem. Add a culture and you'll start seeing it.

    A class of localization issues that was extremely uncommon will be showing up more often :(
  • Anonymous
    February 09, 2004
    Blasphsmey! There is no people outside the US!! There are sea serpants and you will fall off the edge of the Earth! The Sun orbits around the US!..

    Put him in the stocks, spreading dangerous rumours of lands beyond the US.