Register multiple versions of same assembly in GAC

Question

Hi,

I need to register two versions of the same assembly in the GAC.

From what I understand, it should be possible to register both versions, however when I try to register the second one using gacutil.exe I get the following message:

Assembly already exists in cache. Use /f option to force overwrite

The assembly I'm trying to register is Microsoft.AnalysisServices and the two versions I need to register are 10.0.1600.22 (SQL Server 2008) and 10.50.1600.1 (SQL Server 2008 R2).

When I view the GAC in windows explorer the "version" column for this DLL says "10.0.0.0" rather than the full version number.

Is there some way to register both of these assemblies?

Answer 1

No, their assembly versions are the same (which is strange tbh) - the versions you are looking at are build (or file versions.) The GAC only takes the assembly version into account when evaluating the identity. Look up AssemblyVersionAttribute and AssemblyFileVersionAttribute in MSDN/TECHNET to learn more.