[Mono-devel-list] Bride of GAC

Jonathan Pryor jonpryor at vt.edu
Tue May 11 18:42:07 EDT 2004


<snip/>
> However, the resolving from the GAC is fairly broken in general.

The problem, as I understood it, wasn't that resolving from the GAC is
"broken".  The problem is one of portability and "buy-in".

If we resolved from the GAC, mcs would require assembly references such
as ``"/r:System, Version=1.0.5000.0, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"''.

Obviously, this won't be accepted by Microsoft CSC.EXE, at least not
immediately.  Plus, all other compiler vendors would need to "buy-in" to
this approach.  Plus, it's verbose as hell, and complicates the life of
Nant, as it needs to keep track of the full version, public key token,
culture, etc.

Compare the above to the current situation, where we do:

	-L <some-path> -r:System.dll

Want a different version?  Change <some-path/>.  Fairly easy, and all
existing compilers already support this syntax.

 - Jon





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