Deploy Microsoft Application Block in Shared Folder

Question

Hi All,

We are creating a shared libraries which is basically wrapper over the Microsoft Application Blocks (Caching, Logging etc).

I am trying to make this library available to multiple ASP.Net application.

This library is deployed in a shared foler.

I have created a custom Container which will be used by all ASP.net application to use any service (logging, caching) etc from Library. Location of the Library Folder is used by the container to locate the library dll.

All the configuration for the Application Block is in app.config which is loaded dymanically by the Application blocks.

The problem i am facing is that the Configuration tries to load the Application block assuming that Application Block Dlls will stored in the GAC but For some reason I cannot place the application block assemblies in GAC. I have them in the same folder as Library Dll.

Because of this, the Library Dll is not able to load the Application Block. I think one way of resolving this is to Specify the CodeBase element in the runtime section in Machine.Config. I would like to know if there is any better way where in I can specify the location of the Application blocks dlls in Config file.

Any thoughts?

Regards,

Answer 1

In .NET you cannot (easily) share libraries between multiple applications unless they are placed in the GAC.

AFAIR, the CodeBase element is only meant to point to a particular COM component, so it exists to support COM interop. That said, you could export your .NET library as a COM component and reference it through COM interop, but I wouldn't recommend it, because there's a performance overhead as well as a maintainance overhead. Remember dll hell? That's where that approach will lead you.

You should put your assemblies in the GAC if you need to share them between multiple applications.

Otherwise, you will need to deploy them with each application.

Those are the only options with .NET.

Answer 2

For some reason I cannot place the application block assemblies in GAC

Ent Lib 4.x comes with two versions of the DLLs. One version is strong-named and can be added to the GAC; the other isn't and can't. If you're using version 4.x, make sure you're trying to add the files from C:\Program Files\Microsoft Enterprise Library 4.1 - October 2008\Bin rather than the ones from C:\EntLib41Src\bin and you should be okay. If not, can you let us know what the problem is - the GAC is the way to go, IMO.