Assembly Identity

RE: Assembly Identity

Yiru Tang — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 21:53:00 GMT

If I load one assembly through Assembly.LoadFrom(path) And load another assembly in a different appDomain also use LoadFrom(path) (through CreateInstanceFrom actually, but the assembly is from same path). Should the two assembly be considered the same? Seems they are not considered same now. However if I use Load Context in different appdomains, the loaded assembly are considered the same.

RE: Assembly Identity

Suzanne — Sun, 09 Nov 2003 03:25:00 GMT

For identity purposes, identical assemblies in different appdomains are by definition not "the same" as each other. They are not directly comparable to each other. When we do compare them, the comparison happens in only one appdomain, and the assembly that's not already there will be reloaded into it. At that point, their paths would be compared. It sounds like when you count them as being "the same," you really mean that it's being loaded as domain neutral. The behavior you described is expected - assemblies loaded in the LoadFrom context are not loaded as domain neutral.

re: When to Change File/Assembly Versions

Suzanne Cook's .NET CLR Loader Notes — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 04:36:00 GMT

LoadFile vs. LoadFrom

Suzanne Cook's .NET CLR Loader Notes — Sat, 14 Feb 2004 03:41:00 GMT

AssemblyResolve Event

Junfeng Zhang's .Net Framework Notes — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 00:32:00 GMT

re: Assembly Identity

Richard — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 04:14:00 GMT

I am having trouble loading an assembly from an appdomain when the exe is unmanaged and call's my dll through com.

c:\app\app.exe

My dll is found and loaded:

c:\myapp\mydll.dll

But my dll references another dll:

c:\myapp\thirdParty.dll

Fusion says that it is looking for the both dll's in c:\app, but mydll.dll is found and the thirdParty.dll throws a fileNotFound Exception. Both have strong names and reside in the GAC.

First, how is my dll still loaded and more importantly, why is the third party dll not. This only occurs when installed on a client machine? Any ideas. Should I use Assembly.Load and manually load? Thanks.

re: Assembly Identity

Suzanne — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 23:46:00 GMT

It sounds like, in the failure case, the Fusion log says that it is probing the application base for the third party dll. That means that it was not found in the GAC. Call "gacutil /l thirdParty" from the failing environment and make sure that the assembly with the exact same, post-policy display name as listed in the Fusion log is in the GAC.

re: Assembly Identity

Richard — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 14:37:00 GMT

Your correct. I used installshield to ngen the assembly and it did show up in the assembly folder in windows, but using gacutil /l shows that it is ngen'd in the cahce but not in the GAC. I assumed that the two where the same, but apparently they aren't.

To solve the problem I'll attempt to get installshield to put it in the GAC and see if that resolves the problem.

Thanks.

Unloading Assemblies from an appDomain and IsolatedStorage paths.

ShowUsYour — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 09:06:00 GMT

Debugging an InvalidCastException

Suzanne Cook's .NET CLR Loader Notes — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 05:05:00 GMT

re: Assembly Identity

Dave Friedel — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 10:41:18 GMT

Thank you sooo much.

I seriously feel that if the 2 identical assemblies with strong-names (only located in different directories) should be allowed to load without causing a type-mismatch of objects created and exhanged between - since they are strong-named to say they are the same.

But as it goes, it caused me to pull un-necessary hair out when moving to strong-name - when I felt the files were (and are) identical. I would very much like them to add a property to allow this to happen (when the files are identical with strong names - since it functions without strong names)

regards,
Dave

p.s. thank you again.

Debugging a .NET InvalidCastException

Stale DNA - all things Cappy Popp — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:07:02 GMT

Thanks to Suzanne Cook for this one. &quot;First, obviously, find the two types for which the cast failed,

Debugging an InvalidCastException

Suzanne Cook's .NET CLR Notes — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 01:50:56 GMT

First, obviously, find the two types for which the cast failed and verify that they are the same type

LoadFile vs. LoadFrom

Suzanne Cook's .NET CLR Notes — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 02:04:37 GMT

Be careful - these aren't the same thing. LoadFrom() goes through Fusion and can be redirected to another

re: Assembly Identity

Stephen Gyves — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:15:47 GMT

I am trying to create an assembly comparer. I already have created objects to hold information about assemblies, types, enums...etc. So once I ahve collected information about the assembly, I don;t need it anymore to perform the comparison. Trouble is this, I have to find a way to compare assemblies even if the SAY they are the same version. How can I safely retrieve infromation from both assemblies?

re: Assembly Identity

El Guapo — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 01:36:24 GMT

Stephen, check out an assembly comparison tool called BitDiffer. It can compare assemblies with identical identities...