Download Assembly Cache and No-Touch-Deployment

[Bryan McArdle]

How is the .NET Download Assembly Cache related to IE's Temporary
Internet Files cache?

We have a large app that we are deploying using .NET's
No-Touch-Deployment capability to launch the app directly from a URL.
Right now we are using a small stub .EXE that uses an
Assembly.LoadFrom(URL) call to load the large DLL that holds the
majority of the application. After the first download of the .EXE and
..DLL, subsequent visits to the URL do not re-download the large DLL,
as expected with NTD. Using "gacutil /ldl" I also notice that the
..EXE and .DLL are both in the Download Assembly Cache, as expected.
However, when I delete the .exe and the .dll from IE's Temporary
Internet Files folder they are always redownloaded the next time the
URL is visited.

I was under the impression that with NTD, once the assembly are in
..NET's download cache, then they would never be redownloaded until
they change on the server, regardless of their status in IE's cache.
I'm just worried that some of our users may be vigilant in cleaning
out their IE cache and may complain if they have to constantly
redownload our large app even when it is unchanged. Am I missing
something about No-Touch-Deployment? Is there anyway to remove this
dependancy on IE's cache?

Thanks,
Bryan