Inside Microsoft .NET IL Assembler

Chapter 5

Modules and Assemblies

This chapter discusses the organization, deployment, and execution of assemblies and modules. It also provides a detailed examination of the metadata segment responsible for assembly and module identity and interaction: the manifest. As you might recall from Chapter 1, “Simple Sample,” an assembly can include several modules. Any module of a multimodule assembly can—and does, as a rule—carry its own manifest, but only one module per assembly carries the manifest that contains the assembly’s identity. This module is referred to as the prime module. Thus each assembly, whether multimodule or single-module, contains only one prime module.