We are currently developing our build process for an ASP.NET application.
This application will consist of about 8 assemblies in total. Even though
these assemblies will be deployed in a private application directory, we are
would like to apply strong names to them.
If possible, we would like to avoid the need to rebuild any given
Assembly if code changes have not occurred. However, a problem I see with
this approach has to do with the fact that Strong Names are partly comprised
of the version number itself. This can easily be seen in the assembly
manifest using the ILDASM.exe to look at referenced strongly named assemblies.
For example, lets say I build Assembly A & B and they are both strongly
named. If A references B then an extern reference will be placed in the
Assembly A's manifest (during compilation) pointing to Assembly B via its
strong name.
So, if I change Assembly B, but not A, this appears to require a rebuild
of both since Assembly A's manifest would need to be updated to use the new
strong name for Assembly B, even though Assembly A did not change. (This
assumes you follow the good practice of updating your Assembly versions when
changes are made.)
Am I missing something here, or is this simply the way things must work
when using .NET strong named assemblies.
-Keith
