To use or not to use GAC

  • Thread starter Thread starter Frederic Forjan
  • Start date Start date
F

Frederic Forjan

Hello All,

I wanted to know, if there is some good reason for or against using the
GAC ?
I've seen no strong point as a pro or a cons for using assembly in GAC
but all discussions take place in 2004...
Now, with 4 years of .NET development and your experience, what is your
advice ?

Best regards,
Frédéric
 
Hello All,

I wanted to know, if there is some good reason for or against using the
GAC ?
I've seen no strong point as a pro or a cons for using assembly in GAC
but all discussions take place in 2004...
Now, with 4 years of .NET development and your experience, what is your
advice ?

Best regards,
Frédéric
Click to expand...

I have used it for when more than one setup project use a common DLL.
Otherwise I just copy it locally
 
Ignacio Machin ( .NET/ C# MVP ) a écrit :
I have used it for when more than one setup project use a common DLL.
Otherwise I just copy it locally
Click to expand...

What is in this case a common DLL ?
Why we should put it in GAC ? "Only" to not use lot of space on hard disk ?

Best regards
 
Ignacio Machin ( .NET/ C# MVP ) a écrit :







What is in this case a common DLL ?
Why we should put it in GAC ? "Only" to not use lot of space on hard disk?

Best regards- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
Click to expand...

I've personally never used it. The main reason is to share common
assemblies but since disk space is not an issue anymore and assemblies
don't take up much room, I'd rather copy it locally than risk a
backward compaibility issue. You can maintain multiple versions of the
same assembly in the GAC but then you'd need to take an extra step to
deploy it. Why bother?

Thanks

Carl
 
My experience with the GAC is that it doesn't play well with Windows
Installer and consequently can be a deployment issue.
There's this, an upgrade issue: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/905238.
There's the fact that every file in an MSI setup is installed on to the
system in the same way *except* those going into the GAC - they're not
available for any code to use until after the install so dependencies on
GAC'd files you're installing are an issue. The GAC has become the System
folder equivalent. Just dump your assemblies in there and the system will
find them. Is there a good reason to have your assembly in the GAC? Saving
disk space is not a good reason IMO - is there a functional requirement, or
is there some tidiness thing saying that because it's shared you want one
copy in the GAC?
 
Phil Wilson a écrit :
Is there a good reason to have your assembly in the GAC? Saving
disk space is not a good reason IMO - is there a functional requirement, or
is there some tidiness thing saying that because it's shared you want one
copy in the GAC?
Click to expand...

No, we are starting a new project on C#.
And some people are not agreeing on using or not the GAC...

So I wanted to have your point of view about using it or not :-)
 
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