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Drag and Drop and GAC

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Funny how some of the simplest things remain hidden from us - just got to know that a simple and easy way to install an assembly into the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) is to simply open the %windir%\assembly folder in Explorer and drag and drop the DLL you want to GAC into it. That's it. As simple as that. No need for gacutil.exe and the .Net SDK. I assuaged myself that this was probably a Whidbey feature but seems like it has been there since v1.0.

Tried it and loved it - only catch is that it does not force update the assembly if it already exists - doesn't even throw a prompt asking if you want to update, like happens when copying files in explorer. Too bad. Maybe with .Net 2.0?

On the same note - there are a few more folders in %windir%\assembly with Whidbey other than GAC, such as GAC_32, GAC_MSIL (note that these names may change by the time Whidbey RTMs).

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 13, 2008
    Thank you so much, I am wondering why making simple things looking complicated.