CHAPTER 14 BUILDING AND CONFIGURING CLASS LIBRARIES
Figure 14-12. The contents of App.config will be copied to a correctly named *.config in your output
directory
Using this approach, all you need to do is maintain App.config, and Visual Studio will ensure your
application directory contains the latest and greatest configuration data (even if you happen to rename
your project).
Understanding Shared Assemblies
Now that you understand how to deploy and configure a private assembly, you can begin to examine the
role of a shared assembly. Like a private assembly, a shared assembly is a collection of types intended for
reuse among projects. The most obvious difference between shared and private assemblies is the fact
that a single copy of a shared assembly can be used by several applications on the same machine.
Consider the fact that all the applications created in this text that required access to mscorlib.dll. If
you were to look in the application directory of each of these clients, you would not find a private copy of
this .NET assembly. The reason is that mscorlib.dll has been deployed as a shared assembly. Clearly, if
you need to create a machine-wide class library, this is the way to go.
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