Identifying Code with Strong Names

Code must be uniquely identified to be shared. The Global Assembly Cache (GAC) does not support an assembly that does not have a strong name. You should seriously consider giving even your private assemblies a strong name that uniquely identifies your code. A strong name provides a unique identifier to a set of code that is statistically impossible to be duplicated. In other words, a strong name is a means of uniquely identifying this code as yours. A strong name is part of an AssemblyName that consists of four parts:

  • Name—Visual Studio assigns a name to an assembly that is the name of the output DLL, minus the DLL suffix. This name can be any name that you choose.

  • Publisher Key—The actual public key stored in ...

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