Richard Grimes released a very nice tutorial about how .Net locates and loads assemblies.
It’s written in a clear style, and provides practical and valuable information with code snippets on the following subjects:
- assemblies and metadata
- Fusion and
fuslogvw(the assembly binding log viewer) - versioning (including versioning without a strong name)
- rebinding and redirection
- shared assemblies
- publisher policies
- dynamic loading
Understanding assembly binding was critical for anyone building serious .Net applications at the time. Most “file not found” or “version mismatch” issues in production could be traced back to a misunderstanding of these mechanisms.
A must-read for any .Net developer working with complex deployment scenarios.