What is the GAC in NET

Question

Just looking for a short overview of GAC for a layman  not a link please

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The Global Assembly Cache  GAC  is a folder in Windows directory to store the  NET assemblies that are specifically designated to be shared by all applications executed on a system   Assemblies can be shared among multiple applications on the machine by registering them in global Assembly cache GAC   GAC is a machine wide a local cache of assemblies maintained by the  NET Framework

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GAC  Global Assembly Cache  is where all shared  NET assembly reside

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GAC   Global Assembly Cache Let s break it down   global - applies to the entire machine assembly - what  NET calls its code-libraries  DLLs  cache - a place to store things for faster common access  So the GAC must be a place to store code libraries so they re accessible to all applications running on the machine

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Centralized DLL library

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Global Assembly Cache     Each computer where the common   language runtime is installed has a   machine-wide code cache called the   global assembly cache  The global   assembly cache stores assemblies   specifically designated to be shared   by several applications on the   computer       You should share assemblies by   installing them into the global   assembly cache only when you need to    As a general guideline  keep assembly   dependencies private  and locate   assemblies in the application   directory unless sharing an assembly   is explicitly required  In addition    it is not necessary to install   assemblies into the global assembly   cache to make them accessible to COM   interop or unmanaged code    The things MSDN contains may surprise you    you can usually read it like an article  The straightforward and most important bits at the top  the intricate details deeper down  It certainly explains it better than I could   Note that Visual Studio displays all the DLLs in the GAC in the  NET tab of the References window   Right-click on a project in Solution Explorer and select Add Reference   This should give you a more tangeable idea

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Right  so basically it s a way to keep DLLs globally accessible without worrying about conflicts   No more DLL Hell   Each architecture and version gets it s own place to live   It also gets it own way to browse it in Explorer  so if you go to     C  Windows assembly   In windows explorer it lists all the DLLs     But if you fire up cmd  you can see how it s really structured    C  Users tritter cd C  Windows assembly  C  Windows assembly dir   Directory of C  Windows assembly  07 20 2009  02 18 PM     lt DIR           GAC 06 17 2009  04 22 PM     lt DIR           GAC 32 06 17 2009  04 22 PM     lt DIR           GAC 64 06 17 2009  04 22 PM     lt DIR           GAC MSIL     snip                   0 File s               0 bytes                9 Dir s   90 538 311 680 bytes free  C  Windows assembly cd GAC 64  C  Windows assembly GAC 64 dir   Directory of C  Windows assembly GAC 64  06 17 2009  04 22 PM     lt DIR             06 17 2009  04 22 PM     lt DIR              01 19 2008  09 54 AM     lt DIR           blbproxy     snip    01 19 2008  09 54 AM     lt DIR           srmlib 01 19 2008  06 11 AM     lt DIR           System Data 01 19 2008  06 11 AM     lt DIR           System Data OracleClient     snip                   0 File s               0 bytes               34 Dir s   90 538 311 680 bytes free  C  Windows assembly GAC 64 cd System Data  C  Windows assembly GAC 64 System Data dir  Directory of C  Windows assembly GAC 64 System Data  01 19 2008  06 11 AM     lt DIR             01 19 2008  06 11 AM     lt DIR              04 11 2009  12 20 PM     lt DIR           2 0 0 0  b77a5c561934e089                0 File s               0 bytes                3 Dir s   90 538 311 680 bytes free  C  Windows assembly GAC 64 System Data cd 2 0 0 0  b77a5c561934e089  C  Windows assembly GAC 64 System Data 2 0 0 0  b77a5c561934e089 dir   Directory of C  Windows assembly GAC 64 System Data 2 0 0 0  b77a5c561934e089  04 11 2009  12 20 PM     lt DIR             04 11 2009  12 20 PM     lt DIR              04 11 2009  12 12 PM         3 008 512 System Data dll                1 File s       3 008 512 bytes                2 Dir s   90 538 311 680 bytes free  C  Windows assembly GAC 64 System Data 2 0 0 0  b77a5c561934e089    Here you can see version 2 0 0 0  b77a5c561934e089 of System Data   A DLL is identified by 5 parts    Name Version Architecture Culture Public Key   Although the first 3 are generally the big ones

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It s like the COM registry done right  with respect to the physical files as well as their interface and location information   In COM  files were everywhere  with centralised metadata   The GAC centralises the bang shoot

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Exe Application  first of all  references from a current directory to a subdirectory  And then  system directory  VS6 0 system directory was   windows system32   NET system directory is like the below GAC path    GAC path  1  C  Windows Assembly  for  NET 2 0   3 5   2  C  Windows Microsoft NET assembly  for  NET 4 0  How to install an assembly into GAC  as Administrator   1  Drag and Drop  2  Use GacUtil exe with Visual Studio Command Prompt    gacutil -i  Path  Assembly Name  dll    Note  To install an assembly into the GAC  the assembly must be strongly named       Otherwise you get an error like this  Failure adding assembly to the cache       Attempt to install an assembly without a strong name   How to uninstall an assembly from GAC  as Administrator    gacutil -u  Assembly Name   Version 1 0 0 0  PublickeyToken 7896a3567gh    Note   has no extention   dll      Version and PublickeyToken can be omitted and be checked in GAC assembly

[.net] What is the GAC in .NET?

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