What are NET Assemblies

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What are  NET Assemblies  I browsed over the net and I am not able to understand the definition

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In more simple terms  A chunk of  precompiled  code that can be executed by the  NET runtime environment  A  NET program consists of one or more assemblies

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See this      In the Microsoft  NET framework  an assembly is a partially compiled code library for use in deployment  versioning and security

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physical collection of Class  interface  enum etc which is in IL code  Which can be  EXE or  DLL file  EXE is executable file and  DLL can dynamically used in any  net Supported language

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In  NET  when we compile our source code then assembly gets generated in Visual Studio  Assembly consists of two parts Manifest and IL Intermediate Language   Manifest contains assembly metadata means assembly s version requirements  security identity  names and hashes of all files that make up the assembly  IL contains information about classes  constructors  main method etc

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In addition to the accepted answer  I want to give you an example    For instance  we all use  System Console WriteLine     But Where is the code for System Console WriteLine   which is the code that actually puts the text on the console    If you look at the first page of the documentation for the Console class   you   ll see near the top the following  Assembly  mscorlib  in mscorlib dll  This indicates that the code for the Console class is located in an assem-bly named mscorlib  An assembly can consist of multiple files  but in this case it   s only one file  which is the dynamic link library mscorlib dll    The mscorlib dll file is very important in  NET  It is the main DLL for class libraries in  NET  and it contains all the basic  NET classes and structures   if you know C or C    generally you need a  include directive at the top that references a header file  The include file provides function prototypes to the compiler  on the contrast The C  compiler does not need header files  During compilation  the C  compiler access the mscorlib dll file directly and obtains information from metadata in that file concerning all the classes and other types defined therein    The C  compiler is able to establish that mscorlib dll does indeed contain a class named Console in a namespace named System with a method named WriteLine that accepts a single argument of type string   The C  compiler can determine that the WriteLine call is valid  and the compiler establishes a reference to the mscorlib assembly in the executable    by default The C  compiler will access mscorlib dll  but for other DLLs  you   ll need to tell the compiler the assembly in which the classes are located  These are known as references    I hope that it s clear now   From DotNetBookZero Charles pitzold

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Assembly is the smallest unit of deployment of a  net application  It can be a dll or an exe  There are mainly two types to it    Private Assembly  The dll or exe which is sole property of one application only  It is generally stored in application root folder Public Shared assembly  It is a dll which can be used by multiple applications at a time  A shared assembly is stored in GAC i e Global Assembly Cache     Sounds difficult  Naa     GAC is simply C  Windows Assembly folder where you can find the public assemblies dlls of all the softwares installed in your PC   There is also a third and least known type of an assembly  Satellite Assembly  A Satellite Assembly contains only static objects like images and other non-executable files required by the application   Hope this helps the readers

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Wikipedia has to say      In the Microsoft  NET framework  an   assembly is a partially compiled code   library for use in deployment    versioning and security  There are two   types  process assemblies  EXE  and   library assemblies  DLL   A process   assembly represents a process which   will use classes defined in library   assemblies   NET assemblies contain   code in CIL  which is usually   generated from a CLI language  and   then compiled into machine language at   runtime by the CLR just-in-time   compiler  An assembly can consist of   one or more files  Code files are   called modules  An assembly can   contain more than one code module and   since it is possible to use different   languages to create code modules it is   technically possible to use several   different languages to create an   assembly  Visual Studio however does   not support using different languages   in one assembly    If you really did browse it would help if you d clarify what you don t understand

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As assembly is the smallest unit of versioning security  deployment and reusability of code in Microsoft Net   It contains   - Assembly Identity - Manifest - Metadata - MSIL Code - Security Information - Assembly Header

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Visual Studio solutions consists of one or more projects  For Example    Console projects can produce an assembly  An assembly is logically chunk of code that can be shipped to customers  and physically an  EXE  executable program  or  DLL  are reusable by other programs

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Assembly is the fundamental part of programming with  NET Framework  It contain code that CLR executes MSIL Microsoft Intermediate Language  code in a portable executable file will not be executed if it does not have an associated assembly manifest

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An assembly is a collection of types and resources that forms a logical unit of functionality  All types in the  NET Framework must exist in assemblies  the common language runtime does not support types outside of assemblies  Each time you create a Microsoft Windows   Application  Windows Service  Class Library  or other application with Visual Basic  NET  you re building a single assembly  Each assembly is stored as an  exe or  dll file    Source   https   msdn microsoft com en-us library ms973231 aspx assenamesp topic4  For those with Java background like me hope following diagram clarifies concepts -  Assemblies are just like jar files  containing multiple  class files   Your code can reference an existing assemblie or you code itself can be published as an assemblie for other code to reference and use  you can think this as jar files in Java that you can add in your project dependencies    At the end of the day an assembly is a compiled code that can be run on any operating system with CLR installed  This is same as saying  class file or bundled jar can run on any machine with JVM installed

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MSDN has a good explanation      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

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In  Net  an assembly can be      A collection of various manageable parts containing Types  or   Classes   Resources  Bitmaps Images Strings Files   Namespaces    Config Files compiled Privately or Publicly  deployed to a   local or Shared  GAC  folder  discover-able by other   programs assemblies and  can be version-ed

[c#] What are .NET Assemblies?

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