Junfeng Zhang's Windows Programming Notes

This is an FAQ posted internally. Share it with everyone. It applies to .Net framework 2.0 beta2+. How do I mix C# and C++ code in a single assembly? If your C++ code is not compiled with /clr:safe (i.e. it is compiled with /clr or /clr:pure...

Assembly.LoadFrom is a weirdo. 1. It is order dependent. If you call Assembly.LoadFrom on multiple assemblies with the same assembly name, you will always get the first copy, even though those assemblies have different file paths. 2. Assemblies loaded...

In my previous post I talked about how FILE_SHARE_DELETE can cause ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED error. Diagnose access denied error is hard, especially when it only happens under stress. Fortunately FileMon from sysinternals folks can capture all the file...

There are several layers of binding policies in .Net framework. App Policy, Publisher Policy, Host Policy and Admin policy. Policies are defined in config files. The config files are parsed once per AppDomain. The parsed result is used later for...

CLR side by side does not make compatibility any easier. ...

I still get questions about whether to use GAC or not. People point to me Chris Sells's article Avoid the GAC . Chris' article does not represent Microsoft's official stand. We recommend people to put assemblies to GAC whenever make sense.

CLR today supports multiple versions of an assembly side by side, contrast to native loader. In the native world, when you call LoadLibrary(“foo.dll”) multiple times, you will only get one copy of foo.dll loaded. In CLR, since the assembly name...

How to find out where Assembly.Load(String) would load an assembly from without actually doing it?...

GAC gives you three advantages in terms of deployment: Sharing . Assemblies in GAC are shared among all applications for all users. Versioning . Multiple versions of the same assemblies can co-exist in GAC. Servicing . When you install...

This discussion only applies to Assembly.Load(). Today CLR's assemblies loading mechanism is very dynamic. The dynamic nature is shown in various places: 1. Dependencies are not resolved until they are actually used. 2. You can subscribe to AssemblyResolve...

In case you don't know, SQLCLR team starts blogging now. http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlclr/default.aspx If you want to know about CLR in Yukon, watch their blog.

GAC Internals Are Implementation Detail...

From a business stand point of view, compatibility is God. New versions of .Net framework should never break applications working fine in previous version of .Net framework. But from a developer of .Net framework’s point of view, compatibility is...

ACMQueue.com's March 2005 Edition has an article by Dorian Birsan from IBM. On Plug-ins and Extensible Architectures http://acmqueue.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=286 The discussion is based on Eclipse project. But much of...

Assemblies in LoadFrom context can’t be domain neutral. Also they can’t use NGEN. What is so special about assemblies in LoadFrom context that they can’t be the same as assemblies in the default load context? For one thing, assemblies in LoadFrom...

I discussed ReflectionOnlyAssemblyLoad in detail here: http://blogs.msdn.com/junfeng/archive/2004/08/24/219691.aspx ReflectionOnlyAssemblyLoad explicitly does not apply any binding policy. This is so that you can get the exact assembly you requested...

Disclaimers...