The Deployment Dilemma

To fully appreciate the deployment architecture of the .NET runtime, you must first understand the problems that it was built to resolve. In this section, we briefly visit the issues with deploying COM-based components outside of .NET. Then we focus on what .NET brings to the table in terms of easing the burden of physical deployments, including versioning.

DLL Hell

“DLL Hell” is a term that has developed over the years to describe the near misery experienced by developers while trying to distribute and register their applications into a Microsoft Windows environment. Registering a component with the operating system and COM involves touching the registry; this complicates the whole install process by forcing installers ...

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