CHAPTER 14 BUILDING AND CONFIGURING CLASS LIBRARIES
workspace using Visual Studio, one of the initial project files (located under the Properties node of
Solution Explorer) is named AssemblyInfo.cs. This file contains a number of attributes that describe the
assembly itself. The [AssemblyKeyFile] assembly-level attribute can be added to your AssemblyInfo.cs
file to inform the compiler of the location of a valid *.snk file. Simply specify the path as a string
parameter. For example:
[assembly: AssemblyKeyFile(@"C:\MyTestKeyPair\MyTestKeyPair.snk")]
Note When you manually specify the [AssemblyKeyFile] attribute, Visual Studio will generate a warning
informing you to use the /keyfile option of csc.exe or to establish the key file via the Visual Studio Properties
window. You’ll use the IDE to do so in just a moment (so feel free to ignore the generated warning).
Because the version of a shared assembly is one aspect of a strong name, selecting a version number
for CarLibrary.dll is a necessary detail. In the AssemblyInfo.cs file, you will find another attribute
named [AssemblyVersion]. Initially, the value is set to 1.0.0.0.
[assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.0.0")]
A .NET version number is composed of the four parts (...). While
specifying a version number is entirely up to you, you can instruct Visual Studio to automatically
increment the build and revision numbers as part of each compilation using the wildcard token, rather
than with a specific build and revision value. We have no need to do so for this example; however,
consider the following:
// Format: ...
// Valid values for each part of the version number are between 0 and 65535.
[assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.*")]
At this point, the C# compiler has all the information needed to generate strong name data (as you
are not specifying a unique culture value via the [AssemblyCulture] attribute, you “inherit” the culture of
your current machine, which in my case would be US English).
Compile your CarLibrary code library, open your assembly into ildasm.exe, and check the manifest.
You will now see that a new .publickey tag is used to document the full public key information, while
the .ver token records the version specified via the [AssemblyVersion] attribute (see Figure 14-16).
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