Professional VB 2005 with .NET 3.0 (Programmer to Programmer)

The assembly is used by the CLR as the smallest unit for the following:

• Deployment

• Version control

• Security

• Type grouping

• Code reuse

An assembly must contain a manifest, which tells the CLR what else is in the assembly. The other elements can be any of the following three categories:

• Type metadata

• Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) code

• Resources

An assembly can be just one file. Figure 21-1 details the contents of a single-file assembly.

Figure 21-1

Alternatively, the structure can be split across multiple files, as shown in Figure 21-2. This is just one example of a multiple-file assembly configuration.

Figure 21-2

An assembly can only have one manifest section across all the files that make up the assembly. There is nothing stopping you, however, from having a resource section (or any of the other sections of type Metadata and MSIL code) in each of the files that make up an assembly.