Assemblies in the Common Language Runtime

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.

• Assembly Manifest
  Describes the data in the assembly manifest, and how it is stored in assemblies.

• Global Assembly Cache
  Describes the global assembly cache and how it is used with assemblies.

• Strong-Named Assemblies
  Describes the characteristics of strong-named 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.

Reference

• Assembly
  The .NET Framework class that represents assemblies in the type system.

Related Sections

• Programming with Assemblies
  Describes how to create, sign, and set attributes on assemblies.

• Emitting Dynamic Methods and Assemblies
  Describes how to create dynamic assemblies.