Can I force a program to load a weakly-named assembly when it's linked to a strongly-named assembly?

Question

Hey

I have a program that references a strongly named assembly which is in the gac. I have a debug build of this assembly which I want to debug into, but it isn't strongly named. Can I use a policy file or something to force the program to use the weakly named assembly? Or do I have to recompile the program to reference the weakly named assembly? (These assembles are purchased from a 3rd-party. I have the source to them but I don't have the company's private key to strongly name my own build of them with the same key.)

Thanks, Phil

Answer 1

You should add the assemblies to the Verification skip list by running sn -Vr in the Visual Studio Command Prompt.

This will tell the runtime not to verify the assemblies' signatures.
For security reasons, you should remove them when you finish.

Answer 2

Just changing the [AssemblyVersion] of the debug version would be the quick fix. Running gacutil.exe to temporarily remove the assembly from the GAC would be another.